[Mageia-dev] RFC Package Naming Policy

[Pierre-Malo Deniélou]

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