Suggestion: Use codemeta for extension metadata

[ehennestad]

Codemeta is a metadata schema for software: https://codemeta.github.io. Using codemeta would allow more metadata to be collected for en extension in a more standardized way.

@bendichter Please feel free to add your thoughts!

[rly]

@ehennestad Could you be more specific about your suggestion and what it would add?

From what I can tell, the codemeta.json file typically goes in the root of the source code repo, which in this case would be the extension repo in the user's github/gitlab space. But I think you are suggesting that this codemeta.json replaces ndx-meta.yaml in the recipe/catalog repo. Is that right? I think that makes sense.

I see that the codemeta JSON fields are more structured and standardized, and there are places to add lots more metadata, but I worry that it is a little more work for users, and we would either have to convert old metadata YAML to the new JSON or ask downstream catalog users / parsers support both formats. That might be worth it, but I am not sure if users want to provide or make use of these additional metadata. Alternatively, they could place these metadata in their repo's codemeta.yaml, and a downstream user / tool could access it by navigating to the src key in the minimal YAML that we already have.

The current YAML looks like:

name: ndx-miniscope
version: 0.2.2
src: https://github.com/bendichter/ndx-miniscope
pip: https://pypi.org/project/ndx-miniscope/
license: BSD
maintainers:
  - bendichter

The new minimal codemeta JSON would look like:

{
    "@context": "https://w3id.org/codemeta/3.0",
    "type": "SoftwareSourceCode",
    "author": [
        {
            "id": "_:author_1",
            "type": "Person",
            "email": "ben.dichter@catalystneuro.com",
            "familyName": "Dichter",
            "givenName": "Ben"
        }
    ],
    "codeRepository": "https://github.com/catalystneuro/ndx-miniscope.git",
    "downloadUrl": "https://pypi.org/packages/source/n/ndx-miniscope/ndx-miniscope-0.2.2.tar.gz",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause",
    "name": "ndx-miniscope",
    "version": "0.2.2"
}

with lots of other possible metadata like author ORCID, release date, keywords, development status, funding, and dependencies.

We also make use of the maintainers key being a list of github usernames, for giving permissions to those github users in the created catalog repo. I am not sure where that would go in the codemeta.json

[ehennestad]

But I think you are suggesting that this codemeta.json replaces ndx-meta.yaml in the recipe/catalog repo. Is that right? I think that makes sense.

Yes, that was what I was thinking!

I see that the codemeta JSON fields are more structured and standardized, and there are places to add lots more metadata, but I worry that it is a little more work for users

There is a form-based website for creating the code meta files (but definitely worth weighing the potential extra friction against benefits):

https://codemeta.github.io/codemeta-generator/

We also make use of the maintainers key being a list of github usernames, for giving permissions to those github users in the created catalog repo. I am not sure where that would go in the codemeta.json

Yes, I also do not see an obvious place for this. It might be worth suggesting/discussing this in the code meta project itself:
https://github.com/codemeta/codemeta?tab=readme-ov-file#how-you-can-help

[bendichter]

It doesn't allow for additional fields?