On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 5:26 PM, Stephen Hahn <[email protected]> wrote: > > Now that the bulk of the feature development for pkg(5) is finished > for 2010.next, I'd like to get a few of the distribution-oriented > changes lined up as well. First among these is Rich's proposed set of > package renames, as proposed in > > http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=6186 > > These follow the various threads we've had on package naming: > > http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/pkg-discuss/2008-March/002354.html > http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/pkg-discuss/2008-May/003501.html > > In 2009.06 and subsequently, we've been introducing new packages under > the new scheme, in part to see the effect on the clients, but also to > determine . With Danek's work on renaming and obsoletion, and the > legacy action (for SysV dependency handling), we can proceed to rename > the bulk of the remaining packages. (There are a few packages that > may live under their old names until refactoring and removal.) > > To recap these changes at a high level: > > - packages intended to be installed by a user should have a unique > basename, to ease use of the short form,
Doesn't that, ultimately, cover *all* packages? In that case, should all basenames be unique? Won't users always want to use the short form? In that case, why inflict the hierarchy on the actual package names? Just use the basename as the package name, and it's what the user types, and is unique. Dropping the category hierarchy has some significant advantages: - It keeps the package names short and simple - there's a direct mapping between the user expectation and the package name Having the category as additional package metadata rather than part of the name would be a win in several areas: - it allows a package to be in multiple categories (essential, I feel) - it simplifies category localization -it allows category renames (eg. vendor changes name) without messing with package names - it stops all the bikeshedding about whether the category name is correct for a package -- -Peter Tribble http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ pkg-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-discuss
