dylan publish removes values from package catalog

[fraya]

Publishing a new version of xml-parser I use the command dylan publish ../pacman-catalog.

In pacman-catalog the diff shows that "category" is empty where before there was the value "parsers" and contact is missing the email.

$ git diff v1/xm/l-/xml-parser
diff --git a/v1/xm/l-/xml-parser b/v1/xm/l-/xml-parser
index 21646e5..2a9b124 100644
--- a/v1/xm/l-/xml-parser
+++ b/v1/xm/l-/xml-parser
@@ -1,13 +1,21 @@
 {
-  "category": "parsers",
-  "contact": "dylan-lang@googlegroups.com",
+  "category": "",
+  "contact": "",
   "description": "XML parser",
   "keywords": [],
   "name": "xml-parser",
   "releases": [{
-                 "dependencies": ["meta@0.1"],
-                 "deps": ["meta@0.1"],
-                 "dev-dependencies": ["testworks@2.1"],
+                 "dependencies": ["meta@0.1.0"],
+                 "deps": ["meta@0.1.0"],
+                 "dev-dependencies": ["testworks@2.1.0"],
+                 "license": "MIT",
+                 "url": "https://github.com/dylan-lang/xml-parser",
+                 "version": "0.2.1"
+               },
+               {
+                 "dependencies": ["meta@0.1.0"],
+                 "deps": ["meta@0.1.0"],
+                 "dev-dependencies": ["testworks@2.1.0"],
                  "license": "MIT",
                  "url": "https://github.com/dylan-lang/xml-parser",
                  "version": "0.2.0"

[cgay]

I'll take a look at this if you're not already working on it.

[cgay]

I haven't been able to reproduce this when publishing a new release for dylan-tool, which also has "category" and "contact" entries. Still looking...

[fraya]

Just publish for 'http', this time only "contact" was removed, category was right.

[cgay]

ok, it happens when the dylan-package.json file doesn't contain the "category" or "contact" options, they don't get carried over to the new package definition because of the way it is built up from the dylan-package.json file instead of modifying the original package.

[cgay]

http/dylan-package.json only has "category", so that makes sense with what you described.

[cgay]

haha, it turns out this is working as intended! It's just been a while since I've worked on dylan-tool so I didn't understand it right away. The idea is that package-level attributes in dylan-package.json should override package-level attributes in the catalog. So if you change "category" or "contact" in dylan-package.json you're changing it in the catalog also.

Admittedly it's very unclear which attributes are package-level attributes. I'm not sure what to do about that.

[fraya]

I agree that package-level attributes in dylan-package.json should override package-level attributes in the catalog.

Like user, the only problem I see is: why are not the package-level attributes in the dylan-package.json in the repository of GH?

For instance, I don't see in the http dylan-package.json file the 'license' attribute, and releasing the v1.1.1 I have deleted the MIT license of v1.1.0 that now is "unknown".

[cgay]

I suspect there are some anomalies due to the way I originally created the package catalog, so I wouldn't be shocked if the catalog doesn't exactly match the dylan-package.json files.

Regarding "license", that's a release-level attribute since (my thinking was) that it might change over time. If I add "license": "MIT" to the http dylan-package.json and then publish a new version the license is correctly updated. If the license isn't specified it becomes "Unknown" due to this line: let license = optional-element("license", <string>, "Unknown");

Bottom line, I think it's working pretty much as intended although it could use some polish. For example the doc could be a lot clearer about which attributes belong to the package and which belong to specific releases.

[fraya]

Knowing that the discrepancy could come from the initial import, on my part, there is no problem if, when updating any of the packages, any field is empty, as I can fill it in manually. With no other reason, I close the issue.