RFC: X.Org X11 modularization project - rpm package driver naming

[Jeremy Katz]

On Fri, 2005-08-26 at 18:48 -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote:
> As such, we have decided to package each driver individually in its
> own src.rpm package.  It has now come to the time where we must
> make a decision as to how the driver src.rpm packages will be
> named, so we can begin packaging them, and also let the installer
> team and other groups know what they're called.  As such we are
> soliciting feedback from the Fedora community, including Red Hat
> developers and subsystem maintainers.

Hmm, packaging every driver separately is going to be a significant
amount of work from the point of view of installer and comps
maintenance.  Both have hard-coded lists of packages that are going to
have to be "regularly" updated.  It also introduces some discrepancies
on upgrade.  Also, I don't even want to think about a driver split for
whatever reason and the following fallout... "fun".

> Proposal:
> ~~~~~~~~
> Here is my initial proposal for naming the src.rpms, along with
> brief rationale, and the real (or perceived) advantages and
> disadvantages:
> 
> xorg-x11-driver-<type>-<name>
> 
> The prefix of "xorg-x11" identifies the driver package as being
> an official part of the upstream X.Org project.  This distinguishes
> the driver from one that might be provided by the "dri" project,
> the "gatos" project, or any other project.  It makes it easier
> to substitute alternative driver packages that provide a driver
> of the same name.  It also makes it clear to the user, the
> developer, and anyone else looking at the package, that the source
> code contained inside came from X.Org directly.  It also makes
> it clearer where bug reports should be filed upstream.  As such,
> I propose all driver packages start with the "xorg-x11-" prefix.

The source doesn't come from X.org directly -- there's a pretty
reasonable chance of there being some patches from us in there.  And
there's a lot to be said for brevity of package names for reasons
alluded to in the off-topic portion of this thread ;)  But, really, it'd
be like naming every single package that comes from GNOME gnome-foo.
And although there is some amount of that, I think that things are
drastically better now :)

> The "driver" portion of the proposed name, indicates that it is
> a driver for the X server, much like "module" in kernel-module
> packages.  

This feels a bit like overkill.  Note that 'module' in kernel-module
packages isn't at all accepted as definitely the way to go.  Adding
-driver just feels a lot like adding 7 characters with little gain.

> Using this naming mechanism, I believe gives us the most
> flexibility with driver packages, and makes life a lot easier
> down the line as far as maintenance goes.  It also makes the
> packages very obvious as to what their contents are.

Does it make it obvious?  Although it may make the name of the driver
module obvious, I'm not sure it actually makes things obvious as to what
that's useful for.  And sending users scrambling for the foobazbarlet
driver is probably less than useful :-)

Jeremy