Re: Parsing package filenames (was: Re: New ftp method for dselect)

[Bill Mitchell <mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com>]

Fernando Alegre <fernando@mars.superlink.net> said:

> [...]  the whole sunsite and tsx archives, which 
> store packages with an almost standard format. Even though they are not 
> Debian packages right now, some (many?) could be in the future.  And the 
> debianized name should be as close to the upstream name as possible. 
> Adding a revision number between the package-and-version block and the 
> extension (almost always tar.gz or tgz) is OK, but touching something 
> within the package-and-version block (which was chosen by the original 
> author) seems to me as an intrusion.

That sounds like a very good point.  Also, most current packages probably
already conform to this.

One major difference between this and our current naming scheme is that
this leaves open the possibility of a non-'-' separator, or no separator
at all, between package and version, while we presently require a '-'.
Another major difference is that Version does not seem to be guaranteed
to be machine-parseable from package-and-version.

I think having the upstream version as a separate and identifiable
field is probably too deeply ingrained into our package handling
procedures to consider changing that at this point.

A mostly-compatable compromise would seem to be:

  Package-Version-Revision.Extension

  Package:   Retained unchanged.  May contain any printable chars.

             Maintainer makes a judgement regarding the separation
             of the upstream package and version fields.  If they're
             not separated by a '-' in the upstream package-and-version
             field, maintainer mangles the package-and-version field
             from upstream to debianize it as package-version.

  Version:   Debian package naming conventions forbid embedded '-'
             chars in version numbers.  Maintainer mangles the
             upstream version number as necessary to eliminate any
             of these.  Most packages should not need to have their
             upstream package-and-version field mangled, but some will.

  Revision:  Added by debian package maintainer.  Usually numeric,
             but may contain any printable chars except '.'.

  Extension: May contain any printable chars.