[Fedora-packaging] PHP packaging policy notes

[Christopher Stone]

On 6/30/06, Joe Orton <jorton at redhat.com> wrote:
> I don't see why it's necessary for a PEAR package to require
> php-pear(PEAR); that is somewhat equivalent to an RPM having "Requires:
> rpm"; it should be sufficient and correct for PEAR packages to simply
> "Requires: php-pear" AFAICS.

I think the php-pear(PEAR) should remain.  It refers the the class,
and therefore uses the class name, so something like php-pear-Foo-Bar
would have a provides php-pear(Foo_Bar) which is the actual name of
the class rather than some Fedora package naming standard.

See my package:
http://tkmame.retrogames.com/fedora-extras/php-pear-Payment-Process.spec
Where I have many such pear class requirements.  These are listed on
the pear download pages, for example:
http://pear.php.net/package/Payment_Process/download

The whole php-pear(Foo) thing is done to provide a reference to the
true class name and to provide better cross compatibility between
distributions.

>
> Why should a PEAR package for foo provide php-foo?  Not sure that's a
> good idea.

I'm not sure this is a good idea either, and I'm not sure of why it's
part of the PHP packaging guidelines.

>
> On "Other Packages": an application written in PHP or such like should
> not have a php- prefix at all.  A Smarty package should be called
> "smarty" (following the "upper-case is evil" rule of packaging).

I would agree except that Smarty is not an application, it is a
library meant to be used by applications.  I think the php-Smarty as a
name is fine.