Bundle metadata

OLPC bundles (currently activity bundles and collections, though others have been discussed from time to time) contain a set of metadata in a .info file. Currently a slightly different set of data is gathered for each type (see a sample library.info file for a collection).

A separate set of metadata again is gathered via specfiles for rpms that are included in latest builds. So to include your latest version of an activity, the maintainer would need to

update the .info file inside its bundle, and repackage the .xo[l] file

update the .spec file inside the rpm defining the bundle

put the new spec into joyride

update the wiki or other source repository with the latest version of the bundle file.

As of late 2007, there is some agreement that the metadata tracked in bundle info files needs to be expanded.

Draft proposal for updating bundle metadata requirements

Below is an early draft of a suggested set of fields for a unified .info file that can be use for all bundles (including generic bundles of a few files put together in order to share them). Depending on the context, some of these fields will not be used or useful.

Included is a set of suggested required files that all bundles should contain. Currently only the .info file and a Manifest are required; the latter and some of the fields of the former is not in use, while other files such as a uniformly-named file for acknowledgements and copyright/licensing details, have not been named.

Please add to the discussion, add or remove suggested fields, or alter the lines drawn between required files in a config directory and required fields in the .info file itself. For instance, changlog data that is kept directly within .spec files is here relegated to a required changelog.

suggested unified info file

blue : current field, same meaning

purple : current field, some change in meaning; or name change to make it clearer

green : current field for one of the .info/.spec formats we use

red : new desired field; either replacing existing but unused field or adding new information

• name - string
• long_name - or better "pretty_name", for display (could be shorter than name
• mime_types - semicolon? separated list of strings
• locale - comma? separated list of strings
• category - string
• bundle_id (change name for clarity, standard style?)
• icon - filename (change name for clarity; add path?)
• exec - shell invocation (change name for clarity?)
• version - int.int
• sugar_version - int.int
• author - string (creator?)
• maintainer - string, rfc822 email header
• license - fedora license fields
• last_update - date
• url - url (or 'project url')
• collection_type - type (for client-mediated display)

files

changelog - required

• • person/author
  • merge information : specific versions of projects being branched/borrowed from
  • date/time

bib_info -- optional

The point of the bib_info.xml is to make it easy for large-scale learning object repositories like DSpace, Fedora Repository Server, GLOBE, and ARIADNE to serve up .xo bundles. For this reason we chose a simple standard -- Dublin Core encoded in XML -- that plays well with others rather than create our own.

tags

There was debate about how to handle this. A section in bib_info, including file sections for the collection as a whole or named subcollections? A separate file with a set of all relevant tags for the whole bundle, one per line? An entry in the .info file?