Package naming guidelines questions

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Jerry James wrote:
> In the section entitled, "Multiple packages with the same base name",
> the package naming guidelines state that one package should use the
> base name with no version, and all others should include the version
> in their names.  I have two questions about this.
> 
> First, is the intent that the most recent version of the package be
> the one with no version number, or is that left up to the
> maintainer(s) to decide?  If the latter, and the maintainers decide to
> make an older version be the one with no number, what should happen
> when that package is retired?  I started thinking about this in
> conjunction with the call for help with the Java guidelines.  We
> currently have an "asm2" package, because there used to be an "asm"
> package.  The name of the upstream project is just "asm", so the
> "asm2" package is currently violating the naming guidelines.
> 
It's up to the maintainer.  It is certainly preferable for the 
maintainer to follow upstream but this can mean different thing in 
different packages.

> Second, is the use of the word "compat" in the name, as in
> "compat-libstdc++-33", considered mandatory, desirable, undesirable,
> something else?

Compat packages are generally different from what is currently 
documented in the naming guidelines.  There was talk of writing 
guidelines for compat- packages but no one has done that yet.

The guidelines are covering things like gtk and gtk2 where you want to 
have two parallel versions of a library where either can be built 
against.  compat- packages are generally runtime-only.  I don't know if 
java has the separation of devel bits and runtime bits so I don't know 
if this makes sense for them.

> So, running with the previous example, should we
> rename "asm2" to "compat-asm2" and make the upcoming "asm3" package be
> named "asm"?

Up to the maintainer whether to use asm for the latest or the earliest 
package.  Whether to use compat- needs a better understanding of java in 
general and what you want to enable with the asm package in particular.

-Toshio

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