Tcl packaging guidelines

[Michael Thomas]

Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
>>>>>> "MT" == Michael Thomas <wart at kobold.org> writes:
> 
> MT> Following the precedent set by perl, python, and ruby, I've
> MT> drafted a set of proposed guidelines for Tcl packages.
> 
> MT> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MichaelThomas/Tcl
> 
> After a couple of reads I'll say that to me these seem mostly sane and
> it seems you've done a lot of work, but I know FA about Tcl so I
> really can't really comment on many of the issues.
> 
> I'm concerned about how disruptive these are.  If every package is
> going to need to be changed then we really need comments from as many
> people as possible who are involved with tcl packaging.

Hence my post to fedora-maintainers.

> One concern I do have is the naming guidelines; why not adopt a "tcl-"
> prefix universally, at least for new packages?

I waffled back and forth on this a few times.  Most Tcl packages already 
have a 'tcl' prefix (not 'tcl-') upstream, which seemed good enough. 
For those that don't have the 'tcl' prefix, users and Tcl developers 
won't be expecting such naming if they are trying to install the 
packages manually, especially when the names are well-entrenched in the 
Tcl community already.  For example, 'tcl-bwidget' is a very 
non-intuitive way to ask for the bwidget extension if I'm getting ready 
to develop a new Tcl app.

Maybe a compromise would be to require the package name change, and 
accept both the 'tcl' and 'tcl-' prefixes (less disruptive).  But 
packages are allowed to 'Provide: foo' for the more common name.  Example:

Name: bwidget

becomes

Name: tcl-bwidget
Provides: bwidget

?

--Wart