[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

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