Extended package information in PEAR REST interface

Hi, The PEAR installer uses, as most of you know, a REST interface to channel servers[1]. It consists of several XML files at defined locations. One of the XML files contains information about the package: Name, Description, License, Authors. It's at p/$package/info.xml, e.g. [2]. [1] http://pear.php.net/manual/en/core.rest.php [2] http://pear.php.net/rest/p/net_webfinger/info.xml What I'm longing for is a way to discover information like the package home page URL, as well as the package's public code repository URL (as well as its code http interface URL). This information are very important for channel server aggregators that have been in the talk for a while. One aggregator is http://pyr.us/ written by Brett Bieber and used by Pyrus' "search" command to find packages across multiple channels. I'd like to give it a nicer web interface, and for that we need at least have a link to the package homepage. ---- The question now is where to put that information. The DOAP project [3] already defines a schema to express such information, and we should re-use that. PEAR actually exports DOAP already, just add "/doap" to a package homepage[4]. [3] https://github.com/edumbill/doap/wiki [4] http://pear.php.net/package/Net_WebFinger/doap The location of this information is the standing issue. I have several ideas: 1. Add another file to the REST interface, call it e.g. p/$package/doap.xml This means a new version (REST 1.5) of the PEAR channel server REST specs, but probably the least problems with existing client and channel server implementations. It might also be seen as cleaner. 2. Put that information into r/$package/info.xml in the DOAP namespace. This would mean we just have to adjust the XSD schema and are set. The tags would be optional. No new REST version needed. Only one counter argument comes to mind: The REST files were designed with bandwidth in mind, which means they are as small as possible (tag names like "c" or "n"). Adding DOAP information, that are unnecessary for most channel server clients, would mean a slight increase in bandwidth. What do you think? -- Regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen Christian Weiske -=≡ Geeking around in the name of science since 1982 ≡=-

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