On Mon, Mar 04, 2002 at 04:02:43PM -0600, George Kraft IV wrote:
> If the LSB had specified gziped
> tar files instead, then would we have all LSB formatted .tgz or .tar.gz files to
> be .lsb named? :-)
Personally, yes.
Why? Because the LSB wouldn't have just specified "yeah, just dump your
program in a tar file, and she'll be right" it'd have added a whole bunch
of extra restrictions ("your tarball will be unpacked in /opt, mustn't
contain any symlinks, the file /opt/.runme_first will be executed as root
after the tarball is unpacked, and will then be rm'ed...").
It's helpful (for a user) to be able to tell at a glance whether a
"package" is just a random rpm or an actual LSB. It's helpful because it
means you can say "no, if it ends in .rpm you don't want it; you want
something that ends in .lsb". It's helpful because .rpm's already have
a reputation for most of the sorts of things that the LSB is about to
successfully avoid.
On the name spacing issue, it seems like we have three cases:
* Distributions who want to issue packages implementing (or working
with) the LSB.
* ISV's who want to distribute packages in the LSB format.
* (Possibly) ISV's who want to have a short name for their package,
and have registered such a thing with LANANA.
The second case is the easiest since it's already fully spec'ed. They use the
form:
lsb-<domain>-<package name> [must conform to LSB spec]
If we're willing to just ignore the latter (and it seems like we are),
then distributions can safely use:
lsb-<unhyphenated package name> [eg, a .deb, conforms to Debian policy]
and the name spaces are kept separate.
This suggestion contradicts what the spec says, which is:
] If the package name contains only one hyphen (including the one in
] the "lsb-" prefix) then the package name must be assigned by the Linux
] Assigned Names and Numbers Authority (LANANA), which shall maintain a
] registry of LSB names.
But that seems legitimate, since distributions seem to have much more
use for their own subset of the "lsb-" namespace than LANANA.
Note that "ends in .lsb" is a much easier thing to tell people than
"starts with lsb-, has another hyphen after that, and ends in .rpm".
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
We came. We Saw. We Conferenced. http://linux.conf.au/
``Debian: giving you the power to shoot yourself in each
toe individually.'' -- with kudos to Greg Lehey
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