underscores

[bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens)]

Ian and David and I have been discussing how to make package names parse
cleanly.

There have been a number of proposals so far, but the one I like most is to
use "_" (that's underbar) as a delmiter between the package name and the
version number, and to use it between the version number and the architecture.
The upload processing script would get a file like this:

	package-name_1.2.3_i386.deb

The upload processing script would strip off the architecture name when
moving the file into the architecture-specific directory, so that the
result would look like this:

	package-name_1.2.3.deb

The only difference from what we are doing today is the "_" where we would
presently use "-". This is attractive to me because a simple shell script
(like the ones I use to build the base system) can reliably parse the file
names without any digits-here-and-no-digits-there sorts of parsing rules.

Now, Ian and David have convinced me (by example) that even with only 3
people in the discussion, we can't achieve a consensus on this issue :-) .
Thus, I am about to fall back on our last-resort in decision making.
I will take advice from all of you, stare into my navel for a while,
and make the decision shortly after the 1.1 release is cast in concrete.
Changes will go in the 1.2 system. So you have about 2 weeks to sway me
on this issue.

	Thanks

	Bruce
--
                       *** Re-elect Clinton ***

Bruce Perens               Bruce@Pixar.com            http://www.hams.com/