[Fedora-packaging] UTF-8 package names
Matthias Saou
thias at spam.spam.spam.spam.spam.spam.spam.egg.and.spam.freshrpms.net
Tue Feb 26 18:51:52 UTC 2008
Bill Nottingham wrote :
> Toshio Kuratomi (a.badger at gmail.com) said:
> > Today the Packaging Committee began a discussion of whether package names
> > should be allowed to contain the full range of Unicode characters (encoded
> > as UTF-8) or be restricted to the ASCii subset.
> >
> > This is a bit of a contentious issue with the Packaging Committee members
> > split but not yet set in stone about how to proceed.
> >
> > The main arguments seem to be:
> > Pro Unicode:
> > * Upstream knows best what name is most appropriate for their users. For us
> > to change it locally in Fedora doesn't make much sense.
> > * We allow Unicode in every other piece of the spec so why not in the
> > package name?
> > * We should be shaking out bugs in the handling of Unicode in our software
> > rather than hiding issues with it.
> >
> > Pro ASCII:
> > * Hard to type unicode package names, therefore it is a usability problem.
> > * Is there a limit? Even if European letters are fine what about Kanji or
> > Sanskrit?
> > * Some pieces of software won't handle unicode package names and will need
> > to be fixed.
>
> The biggest issue I could see is that any issues in handling such a package
> would need to be fixed *everywhere* that package is deployed, whether it
> be current Fedora, earlier Fedora, or EPEL. It may not be practical to
> deploy such fixes everywhere.
Not only where the packages are deployed, but also available from :
Some of the ftp/http mirror servers that will be serving the packages
might become a problem...
Matthias
--
Clean custom Red Hat Linux rpm packages : http://freshrpms.net/
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) - Linux kernel 2.6.23.15-137.fc8
Load : 0.21 0.14 0.10
More information about the Fedora-packaging
mailing list