RFC: fix summary text for lots of packages

[Seth Vidal]

On Thu, 20 Nov 2008, Michal Hlavinka wrote:

>
>>> Usually, if I need something, I use yum search keyword and choose what I
>>> will install thx summary, so I prefer useful and descriptive summary
>>> against a few words
>>
>> "yum search" also searches the package %description. And the description
>> is the place where to be much more verbose than in the summary. The
>> %summary is not made for searching, but for enabling the installer and
>> packaging tools to to display a brief and concise package description or a
>> list thereof. That means, put a few relevant keywords in the summary
>> (newspaper headline-style at most), but avoid long/complete sentences as
>> often as possible. That also makes it easier to fit into one line.
>
> yes, but... example: you need some email client, so...
> yum search mail
> and you get:
> evolution-email client
> kmail-client for email
> mutt-mail agent
> squirrelmail-mail client
>
> these summaries will be really short but really useless. You can't choose any package just from summary but you need to go one by one with yum info package. IMHO summary should be descriptive enough to tell you not only difference between mutt and nut.

Not actually.
You can do:

yum info pkg1 pkg2 pkg3 pkg4

and it'll do them all at once.

you can also do yum search -v mail

and then you'll get the description, too

worth mentioning if you know more about what you want you can group yum 
search terms

yum search mail client gnome

and the top of the output will be the packages you most likely want

=================== Matched: client, gnome, mail =====================
balsa.i386 : Mail Client
evolution.i386 : Mail and calendar client for GNOME
evolution-rspam.i386 : Evolution Plugin for reporting spam


-sv