Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[George Shapovalov <george@gentoo.org>]

Hey Dave.

I feel your pain ;), I was the one responsible for the package, so I think I 
need to do some discussion/explanation here.
While I myself sympathise to the more structured approach and would wellcome 
distinguishing packages by categories, the sad truth is that portage does not 
seem to be very consistent even with itself, as Fred Van Andel pointed out.

Now, not so sad truth :)
I just wanted to point out, that originallly portage was category-sensitive, 
and you *had* to specify categiry while emerging the package. The change was 
made quite consciousnessly, as this feature (of being able to drop category) 
was quite requested one (if memory serves me well). Heck, I even catch myself 
now and then enjoing not to have to type too much :). 
Of course the change has implications, that certain category treatment is not 
followed, which can lead to the problems, some of which (albeit minor at this 
point) were emphasized.
As for the existance of two ocaml's: the thing is that this did not become a 
strict policy, while it probably should have, and the developer in question 
might not have known about it. 

Thus I would like to use your request as a bait for other developers and users 
to discuss the issue and decide whether we should "officialize" this policy 
(of not having equivalently named ebuilds under different categories) or 
should we do something else. However IMHO leaving this as "unofficial" policy 
may hart in the long run...

George


On Tuesday 15 April 2003 17:03, Dave Nellans wrote:
> Is that true?
>
> my very scientific test of doing emerge -p ocaml on several machines
> returns that dev-lang/ocaml would be installed on every one.  this would
> seem there is at least "some" mechanism defining which one is returned,
> even if its as silly as being alphebetical by by category name or ??
>
> thanks for the link to the ebuild naming policy chris.  it doesn't
> address this issue though of multiple ebuilds having the same name if
> they are in different categories. anyone have thoughts on how this
> should be done from a technical or user standpoint?  i think from a user
> standpoint it makes more sense to allow multiple ebuilds with the same
> name because then a user searching for them will have both returned
> (even if they have to user the category/ebuild to get that particular
> one to install)
>
> dave


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