[Fedora-packaging] kernel-module package naming

[Dag Wieers]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Dag Wieers wrote:

> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 2005-02-22 at 11:54 -0500, Chuck R. Anderson wrote:
> > >On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 10:46:23AM -0600, Tom 'spot' Callaway wrote:
> > >> Fedora Extras:
> > >> openafs-module
> > >> unionfs-module
> > >
> > >I don't like this.  How are we supposed to refer to these packages in
> > >the yum configuration for installonly?  *-module might collide with
> > >other packages that aren't kernel modules (apache module?  perl
> > >module?).  I like kernel-module-unionfs because it is clear that it is
> > >a kernel module, and we can use the kernel-module-* glob in yum
> > >configuration. 
> > 
> > This seems reasonable. Is anyone opposed to:
> > 
> > kernel-module-GFS
> > kernel-module-openafs
> > kernel-module-unionfs
> > kernel-module-ati
> > kernel-module-nvidia
> 
> Could we also evolve to a lowercase standard for package names ? This 
> example shows a clear example of why uppercase or mixed case could be 
> confusing or problematic.
> 
> Other distributions already moved (or are evolving) to lower case as the 
> default. (Even though perl is a good exception where uppercase and strict 
> names are important)

I once wrote a few documents explaining the package namespace and ideas 
about that, including the kernel-module namespace.

	http://svn.rpmforge.net/svn/branches/docs/dag/old/naming-convention.txt
	http://svn.rpmforge.net/svn/branches/docs/dag/old/renamed-packages.txt

Both have pointers to other projects guidelines regarding naming and 
namespace.

The lib%{name} stuff was very controversial back then, even as a 
proposal. Whatever policy is chosen, I'm sure that the pragmatic way of 
enforcing it would be to start off (or limit it) to new packages only.

The add-on packages is something that is also not yet endorsed by 
everyone. The basic idea is to have an add-on package start with the name 
it adds something to. Like a python module starts off with python-%{name} 
and an xmms plugin starts with xmms-%{name}. Even when it is a sub-package 
of %{name} or the original name is slightly different (does/does not 
include a prefix or is named the other way around).

I think the biggest difficulty with coming up with a proper naming scheme 
is that people want to put that next to the current packages and suddenly 
see a lot of things not complying and then object to the proposed 
standard. We may have to first acknowledge that the current namespace is 
the result of not having a naming convention and acknowledge the fact that 
we don't necessarily need to fix everything that already exists to adopt a 
naming scheme for new packages.

Kind regards,
--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]