Summary of the 2008-10-21 Packaging Committee meeting

Patrice Dumas pertusus at free.fr
Wed Oct 22 08:05:36 UTC 2008


On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 08:42:35PM -0500, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
> 
> * New guideline relating to generically named packages and files.
> ** Tough to actually write a guideline involving the use of common
>    sense as applied to things like this.
> ** Jason will draft a proposal for consideration soon.

Tired to tell everytime the same, I have put an argumentation here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/Packaging_Tricks#Use_of_common_namespace

I think that it would be better to tackle this issue cross distribution,
that is when we see a real conflict or a generic name used, talk to the
distribution list to agree on a name.

There is another issue to be considered, it is the case of existing
software already in fedora. For example ImageMagick puts in %_bindir:
animate compare composite conjure convert display identify import
montage stream, and there are also 2 letter command names, like gv.

A case which is also unclear is the case of sl. This package is a kind
of a joke, when you type sl, there is an ascii art steam locomotive 
that goes through the screen. It is meant to annoy you when you wanted 
to type 'ls' and you typed 'sl'. It uses a precious 2 letter command 
name, however it has to in order to do its job and it could be replaced 
if something serious wanted to use  it, so I think it may go in fedora,
but it isn't that obvious. Review is here:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=466997
I'd recommand not saying anything that precise and let common sense
apply, but this is an unclear case in my opinion.

A last word, I think that it is sad that we have to do a guideline here,
since upstream and packagers should understand the issue, and we already
have too many guidelines, but I also don't know how to solve it
differently, I am tired of looking at every submission and whine if it
smells like a generic name is used.

--
Pat




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