Bug#253511: [PROPOSAL] clarify "package must have a name that's unique ..."
Bill Allombert wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 10:46:30PM +0200, Osamu Aoki wrote:
> > Most of us think that keeping *unique* name requires the choice of
> > package name to be *sane* :) (Yes, I know a gnustep application
> > packager disagreed.)
>
> Whoever s/he is has no case. GNUstep apps are called with a .app suffix,
> like Terminal.app, it is even advertised in the description:
> "Terminal.app provides terminal emulation in a GNUstep environment."
> So the upstream name is Terminal.app, so terminal seems farther
> from upstream name than e.g. "terminal.app", if it is the intend, and
> adding a prefix like gnustep- make easier to find packages related to
> GNUstep.
The above is incorrect, and the Terminal package's description field is
calling it by something other than its name. The .app extension has nothing
to do with an application's name, it's just part of a filename -- like .exe
in Windows. The app doesn't change its name to "Terminal.profile" when it's
been compiled with profiling information, even though it does change its
extension.
There is a clear distinction between an app's "application name" and its
pathname. The former is something that has to be known in order to
communicate with it via the Distributed Objects system (and thus programs
like "gopen"), while the latter is how you find it in the filesystem.
That said, adding an .app suffix to certain package names is (somewhat) less
confusing and certainly less insulting than prepending "gnustep-" to the
names of packages. It still sucks, but less than the alternative.
FWIW, I am one of the upstreams of the package being referred to here (as
well as a DD, but I don't maintain any GNUstep-related packages because I
wouldn't use them), as well as the Preferences application (probably named
prefsapp in Debian).
Neither program is part of GNUstep -- in fact, they are part of an embryonic
user environment called Backbone that happens to use the GNUstep
libraries...and the apps, tools, and frameworks in Backbone are named
sanely, logically, and after their function. We even have a command-line
tool that is in a direct filesystem namespace conflict with a program that's
installed on most Linux-based OSes, and don't care. That program is called
"open", and it's a necessary part of any *step-like system.
--
| Jeff Teunissen -=- Pres., Dusk To Dawn Computing -=- deek @ d2dc.net
| GPG: 1024D/9840105A 7102 808A 7733 C2F3 097B 161B 9222 DAB8 9840 105A
| Core developer, The QuakeForge Project http://www.quakeforge.net/
| Specializing in Debian GNU/Linux http://www.d2dc.net/~deek/
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