Wosh, this is no longer a stable statementset.Wosh wrote: The category file structure is very simple as it only assigns package-names to their category. If all distribution categories once have been classified their source does not matter. The package-names are unique and hopefully have the same categorisation for each distribution. A universal puppy.ctg would be enough. It even could include Slackware and Arch as long as the categorisation has same structure for all distributions.
The freedesktop.org group that is handling categories has updated and added to the standard sets.
Therefore 'old' packages will meet one of the old standards, but newly updated or added packages may or not use a later standard depending on if a builder/packager is using the specific standard.
It will also be important to consider that most distributions have a number of non-standard categories that differntiate only for that build and can have different package-group meanings to different distributions.
And then you get down to the 'use' of the linux machine and what the package-group names relate to, I can best give you a pointer to what I mean, by asking you to consider these two boxes!
Box 1 runs linux and is a business workstation, so it has applications such as openoffice, a finance package, a graphics package, email, firefox, etc. all grouped as "office" applications.
There are a number of these boxes in any adverage office.
Box2 runs linux, however it's a data and email server for a office, it also has logins, monitoring software as well as databases and other common user backends. For it, the words 'office applications' don't mean user applications, but applications it needs to run and monitor to keep it and the office it 'works for' running happily.
So depending on what the builder/packager considers the package will exist on in the end, will depend on what group it will be given.
That is why different .ctg files should be considered, but even then I'm not sure it's enough by itself.