Re: Package naming rant

[Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@gwolf.org>]

Thomas Goirand dijo [Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 06:46:47PM +0200]:
> In the general case, I'd agree. But we're not talking about "a package"
> here, but about a complete *suite* of a complex cloud system.
> 
> The argument is that you can't use OpenStack without at least learning
> what the components are, which makes it pointless (and in fact very
> annoying) to prefix them with openstack-. I'd say it take at least a
> month to understand all the interactions.
> 
> Now that there's the suite::openstack on all of these packages, it will
> be a lot easier to search anyway. Also, I take a great care about the
> short descriptions.

Supporting what I understand from Ian's, Aigars' and Enrico's points,
we have many aeas where the area of application for a package is
encoded in the package name itself. We have (according to "apt-cache
search") 1011 packages starting with "ruby-", 3566 conforming with
"lib.*-perl", 3173 starting with "python-", and even for newcomers,
451 starting with "golang-". And some of them do have quite deep names
(which have been argued against repeatedly for different reasons),
such as (five longest for each):


ruby-rails-assets-jeresig-jquery.hotkeys
ruby-rails-assets-jquery-fullscreen-plugin
ruby-rails-assets-jakobmattsson-jquery-elastic
ruby-rails-assets-markdown-it-diaspora-mention
ruby-rails-assets-markdown-it--markdown-it-for-inline

libbusiness-onlinepayment-transactioncentral-perl
libcatalyst-action-serialize-data-serializer-perl
libplack-middleware-fixmissingbodyinredirect-perl
libcatalyst-authentication-credential-authen-simple-perl
libcatalyst-plugin-authentication-credential-openid-perl

python-xstatic-jquery.bootstrap.wizard
python-sphinxcontrib.programoutput-doc
python-fedmsg-meta-fedora-infrastructure
python-zope.component-persistentregistry
python-djangorestframework-fsm-transitions

golang-github-hashicorp-go-immutable-radix-dev
golang-github-hashicorp-net-rpc-msgpackrpc-dev
golang-github-hydrogen18-stoppablelistener-dev
golang-github-cyberdelia-go-metrics-graphite-dev
golang-github-shurcool-sanitized-anchor-name-dev

Even more, querying from the 50665 my apt-cache knows about, without
discrimination of any kind, the ten longest are:

 $ apt-cache search .|cut -f 1 -d \ |perl -e '@data = sort {length($a)<=>length($b)} <>; print @data[-10..-1]'
 libbusiness-onlinepayment-transactioncentral-perl
 libcatalyst-action-serialize-data-serializer-perl
 libplack-middleware-fixmissingbodyinredirect-perl
 libmono-system-reactive-observable-aliases0.0-cil
 libmono-system-componentmodel-dataannotations4.0-cil
 ruby-rails-assets-markdown-it--markdown-it-for-inline
 libmono-system-windows-forms-datavisualization4.0a-cil
 libcatalyst-authentication-credential-authen-simple-perl
 libcatalyst-plugin-authentication-credential-openid-perl
 libmono-system-runtime-serialization-formatters-soap4.0-cil

So, in all fairness, looking at the longest-named packages mentioning
Openstack:

 $ apt-cache search openstack|cut -f 1 -d \ |perl -e '@data = sort {length($a)<=>length($b)} <>; print @data[-5..-1]'
 python-sphinxcontrib-docbookrestapi
 python-sphinxcontrib.docbookrestapi
 golang-github-rackspace-gophercloud-dev
 fusiondirectory-plugin-openstack-compute
 fusiondirectory-plugin-openstack-compute-schema

Adding 'openstack-' somewhere in their package name won't hurt users
too much.