Dear all,
Following some recent mix-up, some possible ambiguity was found in the
current policy with respect to package naming (as seen in
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Packaging_guidelines#Package_Naming).
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So currently it is written:
«* Name should be the upstream name of the software project, always
lowercase.
* When the package name is different to the project name, you should
define and use %{upstream_name} macro to refer to the original project
name within the spec
* ''Dash '-' must be used as the delimiter for name parts.''
* ''Do NOT use an underscore '_', a plus '+', or a period '.' as a
delimiter.''
* The spec file should be named using the %{name}.spec scheme, i.e. the
name of the package should be used as the name for the spec.»
I propose to change it to the following:
«* The base package names (used for svn and src.rpm) should be the
upstream name of the software project, always lowercase. Upstream names
can contain digits, '+', '_' or '.', but no other special characters.
Really exceptionally, uppercase letters can be allowed if there is
proper justification or historical reasons.
* Package names that are built by Mageia packagers from the upstream
name by adding suffixes should always use '-' as delimiter (e.g.
foo-devel or foo-plugins as derived from the foo package). All '_' and
'+' in package names must come from upstream naming! The '.' in package
names should only come upstream or standard versioning schemes.
* The spec file should be named using the %{name}.spec scheme, i.e. the
name of the source package and svn directory should be used as the name
for the spec.»
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Some of you may notice that the newly drafted policy allows upper-case
letters in packages as an exception (when justified). This is to follow
the current practice (which is not following the current policy, where
we have packages like R-base).
I don't want to raise a heated discussion (there was an inconclusive
discussion a long time ago on cooker [*]) about enforcing an all
lower-case policy. Not sure a consensus can be reached today, but
lower-casing package names should be the default for 99% of the packages
in Mageia.
Any comments? Is it indeed clearer this way? Any other conditions on
package names we should add?
Best regards,
--
Malo
[*] http://lists.mandriva.com/cooker/2006-03/msg03396.php
