commit f8ab6e0a1c3753a5dd856779637f74932b204002
parent 1619de6bfd433b6b8a597a4e8b415d3414d450f6
Author: Christian Grothoff <christian@grothoff.org>
Date: Fri, 1 May 2026 22:54:29 +0200
improve package descriptions
Diffstat:
| M | debian/control | | | 79 | +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------------------- |
1 file changed, 59 insertions(+), 20 deletions(-)
diff --git a/debian/control b/debian/control
@@ -31,15 +31,20 @@ Depends:
netbase,
${misc:Depends},
${shlibs:Depends}
-Description: libraries to talk to a GNU Taler merchant.
+Description: client libraries for the GNU Taler merchant backend
+ GNU Taler is a privacy-preserving electronic payment system. Its
+ merchant backend exposes a RESTful API that lets shops accept
+ Taler payments without implementing the cryptographic protocol
+ themselves.
.
- The GNU Taler merchant backend provides e-commerce
- applications with a simple RESTful API to integrate
- payments using GNU Taler. This C library implements
- a client-side version of that REST API. Please note
- that the core API is pretty simple, so applications
- may legitimately choose to implement the API directly
- instead of using this wrapper.
+ This package ships the C client libraries used to talk to a
+ running Taler merchant backend (libtalermerchant), to its bank
+ account interface (libtalermerchantbank), and shared utility
+ code used by both (libtalermerchantutil). They are required at
+ runtime by the merchant backend itself and by tooling built on
+ top of it. Note that the merchant REST API is small enough that
+ frontends commonly call it directly over HTTP rather than link
+ against this library.
Package: taler-merchant
Architecture: any
@@ -61,22 +66,46 @@ Recommends:
taler-merchant-typst,
apache2 | nginx | httpd,
sharutils
-Description: GNU's payment system merchant backend.
+Description: GNU Taler payment system: merchant backend
+ GNU Taler is a privacy-preserving electronic payment system. The
+ merchant backend implements the cryptographic protocol, stores
+ Taler-specific transaction state in a PostgreSQL database, and
+ communicates with the GNU Taler exchange on behalf of one or
+ more shops ("instances") sharing a single deployment. Frontends
+ and back-office tools talk to it over a RESTful API and never
+ touch the merchant's signing keys or bank credentials directly.
.
- The GNU Taler merchant backend provides e-commerce
- applications with a simple RESTful API to integrate
- payments using GNU Taler. This package provides the
- merchant backend.
+ The package contains the HTTP daemon (taler-merchant-httpd,
+ socket-activated via systemd), the database setup and migration
+ helpers (taler-merchant-dbinit, taler-merchant-dbconfig,
+ taler-merchant-config, taler-merchant-passwd) and the periodic
+ jobs that reconcile incoming bank transfers, monitor exchange
+ deposits, refresh exchange and donau signing keys, run KYC
+ checks, deliver webhooks and produce operator reports
+ (taler-merchant-wirewatch, taler-merchant-depositcheck,
+ taler-merchant-exchangekeyupdate, taler-merchant-donaukeyupdate,
+ taler-merchant-kyccheck, taler-merchant-webhook,
+ taler-merchant-reconciliation, taler-merchant-report-generator).
+ Also included are systemd units, the bundled merchant
+ single-page web application, SQL schema files and example
+ Apache and Nginx reverse-proxy snippets.
Package: taler-merchant-typst
Architecture: any
-Recommends:
+Depends:
pdftk
-Description: Typst packages for GNU Taler merchant.
+Recommends:
+ typst
+Description: Typst packages for GNU Taler merchant PDF generation
+ The GNU Taler merchant backend renders PDF documents -- such as
+ invoices, receipts and legally required tax records -- from
+ Typst templates. This package installs the local Typst packages
+ those templates depend on.
.
- This package contains Typst packages used by the
- merchant for PDF generation. It should be installed
- alongside Typst and pdftk for PDF generation.
+ The pdftk dependency is required at runtime to assemble the resulting
+ PDFs; the typst compiler itself is recommended but kept optional as
+ distros still often lack a native Typst package and thus operators
+ are likely to supply a locally built or vendored Typst compiler.
Package: libtalermerchant-dev
Section: libdevel
@@ -86,6 +115,16 @@ Depends:
libgnunet-dev (>=0.27.0),
${misc:Depends},
${shlibs:Depends}
-Description: libraries to talk to a GNU Taler merchant (development).
+Description: GNU Taler merchant client libraries (development files)
+ GNU Taler is a privacy-preserving electronic payment system. The
+ libtalermerchant family of libraries provides the C client API
+ used by the merchant backend and by applications wishing to talk
+ to it without going through the REST interface directly.
.
- This package contains the development files for libtalermerchant.
+ This package contains the C headers, unversioned shared library
+ symlinks and pkg-config files needed to build software against
+ libtalermerchant, libtalermerchantbank and libtalermerchantutil,
+ plus the libtalermerchanttesting helper library used by the
+ upstream test suite. It also installs taler-merchant-benchmark,
+ a tool for populating a merchant database with synthetic
+ payments to load-test a deployment.
