Allura currently restricts the use of . and _ (period and underscore) in the mount_point when installing a tool / app. This was originally done to enable to routing emails to to the app via the form (e.g.) [email protected]. However, this has become a sticking point for some users, specifically with regards to repository names (and in particular with repositories migrated from other systems, such as SourceForge's classic system which already allowed those characters). Dave, Tim and I started discussing possible options for opening up these characters, and we wanted to open up the discussion here.
Initially, we were thinking that we could just have a flag that an app could set that removed the restriction for these characters for the mount_point of that app when installed on a project, with the understanding that this would break email routing for that app. Tim also had the idea of adding an additional "sanitized" version of the mount_point that could still be used for routing in place of the normal mount_point. However, there would be the potential for conflicts, albeit manageable, if the sanitized version of one tool's mount_point matched the non-sanitized version of another tool's mount_point. I floated the idea of going all the way and using a guaranteed unique identifier, such as the app_config's _id, but then the email address' domain would not be human-friendly. Is it worth coming up with a more complicated system to try to both preserve email routing and allow the characters in the mount_point, or should we just go with a flag and let the tools break their routing? Are there any other ideas that strike a better balance?
