Hi there! Please don't Cc: me, I read the list.
Thiemo, I re-added some part of Liam's mail to avoid two replies :-D On Sun, 08 Jun 2008 07:17:44 +0200, Thiemo Seufer wrote: > Liam Healy wrote: >> I don't have any Debian packages, but I don't like this. >> I've come to dislike the "cl-" prefix for anything, because it >> implies that the language in which the software is written in is the >> most important thing. I don't see "c-" "perl-" etc. for other >> languages, I don't see why lisp should be any different. > > I agree. While for C there's no c- prefix, most of the C libraries are called "lib$UPSTREAMNAME", which is mostly the same. And for Perl you don't have any prefix, but a suffix (e.g. libapt-pkg-perl). Another language, Ruby, gets a more awful suffix (e.g. libdpkg-ruby1.8). Upstream when obliged to choose already use the cl- prefix, which means that we try to follow upstream whenever it's possible. >> Why is there a need for a policy at all? Why not just let the >> authors name the packages as is traditional? With more than 18000 binaries available in Debian, you need a way to distinguish between package names, especially when more binary packages can have a similar name. What if cl-syslog upstream would have decided to call her/his project simply "syslog"? > Furthermore, changing package names without good technical reasons is > gratuitous and only adds trouble for existing users. (Following the > upstream default might be a strong enough argument to change it, as > this reduces long-term confusion.) I agree that randomly changing package names is not accepted, but in this case I see this for Hunchentoot as no pain for at least two reasons: 1) Hunchentoot is not in Etch, IIRC this means that we can even ships only the new package 'hunchentoot' without a migration path. If you don't want trouble, you are advised to use 'stable': not that I'm this kind of maintainer, but at least we don't need to carry cl-hunchentoot for two releases, since we can drop it as soon as Lenny is released (but we need to keep "Provides: cl-hunchentoot") 2) We're not moving from no prefix to prefix, but the other way around: upstream is called Hunchentoot and we want to follow upstream I still think this is the Right Thing™ for Hunchentoot and I'll wait two more days before changing the binary name back to 'hunchentoot'. >> On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Luca Capello <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> > My proposal is that "libraries" should have the cl- prefix at least >> > for the binary package names, since this is very similar to the >> > lib* packages. With "library" I mean all those software which is >> > designed to be used by other packages and not as a stand-alone >> > program. E.g., arnesi [3] or cl-irc [4]. >> > >> > However, binary package names for software which is intended as a >> > stand-alone program should not be prefixed by cl- if they don't >> > already have it. Whenever is possible, the source package name >> > should reflect the upstream one, thus without the cl- prefix if >> > upstream doesn't have it. This is indeed the case for most of the >> > software in this group (e.g. SBCL [5] or StumpWM [6]), but not for >> > all (e.g. Hunchentoot [7] binary package is called cl-hunchentoot >> > in Debian). >> >> As for being a library, I view everything as a library, particularly >> in lisp. Software should be as easy for other software to use as it >> is for people; that is something that lisp facilitates. > > The distinction beween applications and libraries is rather weak in > CL. I though that putting "library" in double quotes was a strong note about the fact that me neither I see a clear distinction between an application and a library in CL. However, some CL software is clearly intended to be used by or in conjunction with others: this is (very?) similar to what happens in C with libraries. > Is there a good reason to follow the limitations of lesser languages? > :-) No, but having a clear "policy" (maybe "guidance" would be better) could finally help everyone in Debian. Thx, bye, Gismo / Luca
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