[gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[Dave Nellans]

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do we have an established naming policy for ebuilds, and where can i
find it?

my gripe is that when i submitted the ebuild for a program named "balsa"
(under app-sci/tbass) several devs told me i could not name it balsa
because the gnome email client balsa already uses that name.  i believed
that is why apps were listed under app-sci, dev-db, etc... which is why
this structure existed in the first place.  i was told however this was
not so and that this wasn't allowed.  in the end the ebuild was called
tbass which is very non-intuitive having a ebuild named something very
dissimilar to its common name.

all was fine untill i went to install ocaml and did emerge -s ocaml only
to find there are TWO packages named ocaml that co-exist seemingly
happily in different categories.  this brings back my original question
of if we have a specific naming policy or if some of the dev's are
mistaken about things.

if we don't have a naming policy yet, should we?  it seems as if naming
issues are becoming more significant now that the number of packages in
portage continues to grow.

any thoughts?
dave

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[Jon Portnoy]

They don't coexist happily. It's impossible to say definitively which 
one you'll get when you emerge appname if appname exists in two 
different categories.

On Tue, Apr 15, 2003 at 05:42:43PM -0600, Dave Nellans wrote:
> do we have an established naming policy for ebuilds, and where can i
> find it?
> 
> my gripe is that when i submitted the ebuild for a program named "balsa"
> (under app-sci/tbass) several devs told me i could not name it balsa
> because the gnome email client balsa already uses that name.  i believed
> that is why apps were listed under app-sci, dev-db, etc... which is why
> this structure existed in the first place.  i was told however this was
> not so and that this wasn't allowed.  in the end the ebuild was called
> tbass which is very non-intuitive having a ebuild named something very
> dissimilar to its common name.
> 
> all was fine untill i went to install ocaml and did emerge -s ocaml only
> to find there are TWO packages named ocaml that co-exist seemingly
> happily in different categories.  this brings back my original question
> of if we have a specific naming policy or if some of the dev's are
> mistaken about things.
> 
> if we don't have a naming policy yet, should we?  it seems as if naming
> issues are becoming more significant now that the number of packages in
> portage continues to grow.
> 
> any thoughts?
> dave



-- 
Jon Portnoy
avenj/irc.freenode.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[Dave Nellans]

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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

On Tue, 2003-04-15 at 17:16, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> They don't coexist happily. It's impossible to say definitively which 
> one you'll get when you emerge appname if appname exists in two 
> different categories.
> 
> On Tue, Apr 15, 2003 at 05:42:43PM -0600, Dave Nellans wrote:
> > do we have an established naming policy for ebuilds, and where can i
> > find it?
> > 
> > my gripe is that when i submitted the ebuild for a program named "balsa"
> > (under app-sci/tbass) several devs told me i could not name it balsa
> > because the gnome email client balsa already uses that name.  i believed
> > that is why apps were listed under app-sci, dev-db, etc... which is why
> > this structure existed in the first place.  i was told however this was
> > not so and that this wasn't allowed.  in the end the ebuild was called
> > tbass which is very non-intuitive having a ebuild named something very
> > dissimilar to its common name.
> > 
> > all was fine untill i went to install ocaml and did emerge -s ocaml only
> > to find there are TWO packages named ocaml that co-exist seemingly
> > happily in different categories.  this brings back my original question
> > of if we have a specific naming policy or if some of the dev's are
> > mistaken about things.
> > 
> > if we don't have a naming policy yet, should we?  it seems as if naming
> > issues are becoming more significant now that the number of packages in
> > portage continues to grow.
> > 
> > any thoughts?
> > dave
-- 

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[Fred Van Andel]

Dave Nellans <dnellans@cs.utah.edu> wrote:
(04/15/2003 17:03)

>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 ??

Thats interesting, on my machine an 
   emerge -p ocaml 
gives me dev-lang/ocaml-3.06. However an
   emerge -S ocaml 
gives me app-xemacs/ocaml first. So emerge
isn't even consistant within itself.

Fred Van Andel

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[George Shapovalov]

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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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[Dave Nellans]

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Ah yes, it was the bad guy George who renamed the balsa package tbass ;)

I agree that its quite nice to have package naming not require the
category and that it should stay that way.  I'd like to see multiple
names be allowed, and to install the others of the same name you just
have to use the category as well.

This makes the common operation of emerge -s return all packages you
might be searching for, which i see as a major disadvantage of not
allowing multiple same named ebuilds.

The question then remains is how to determine which package is the
"default" to be installed if you use only the ebuild name.  I haven't
poked in the code to see how portage is doing it now, but can see three
possible options.  One being alphabetical by category, two being first
come first serve, or three allowing the "most commonly installed" of the
options defined by whomever is maintaining the package(s).  The only
downside is that portage/ebuilds will need yet another thing added to it
similar to SLOTS to help support this =/

my 2 cents
dave

On Tue, 2003-04-15 at 18:11, George Shapovalov wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
-- 

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[Peter Ruskin]

On Wednesday 16 Apr 2003 01:58, Dave Nellans wrote:
> The question then remains is how to determine which package is the
> "default" to be installed if you use only the ebuild name.  I haven't
> poked in the code to see how portage is doing it now, but can see three
> possible options.  One being alphabetical by category, two being first
> come first serve, or three allowing the "most commonly installed" of
> the options defined by whomever is maintaining the package(s).  The
> only downside is that portage/ebuilds will need yet another thing added
> to it similar to SLOTS to help support this =/

Or perhaps better, emerge should fail and print a message like:
"There is more than one package with that name.  Please use
'emerge <category>/<package>.ebuild' for the required package.'"

Peter
-- 
Gentoo-1.4.2.8 Stable. KDE: 3.1.1a Qt: 3.1.2
AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2200+ 768MB.	Kernel: 2.4.20-xfs-r2.	GCC 3.2.2


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[Jeff Rose]

On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Peter Ruskin wrote:

> On Wednesday 16 Apr 2003 01:58, Dave Nellans wrote:
> > The question then remains is how to determine which package is the
> > "default" to be installed if you use only the ebuild name.  I haven't
> > poked in the code to see how portage is doing it now, but can see three
> > possible options.  One being alphabetical by category, two being first
> > come first serve, or three allowing the "most commonly installed" of
> > the options defined by whomever is maintaining the package(s).  The
> > only downside is that portage/ebuilds will need yet another thing added
> > to it similar to SLOTS to help support this =/
>
> Or perhaps better, emerge should fail and print a message like:
> "There is more than one package with that name.  Please use
> 'emerge <category>/<package>.ebuild' for the required package.'"
>
> Peter

This defenitely makes the most sense.  The user will know which app they
want to emerge so portage should ask them rather than just installing some
default app that they really don't want on their machine.  Problem
solved...

-Jeff



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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[George Shapovalov]

Ok, this is shaping up :).

Dave: could you please submit a bug, with a short description of this 
discussion? Otherwise I am afraid this is going to be easily lost..

George


On Tuesday 15 April 2003 18:39, Jeff Rose wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Peter Ruskin wrote:
[skip]
> > Or perhaps better, emerge should fail and print a message like:
> > "There is more than one package with that name.  Please use
> > 'emerge <category>/<package>.ebuild' for the required package.'"
> >
> > Peter


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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Wednesday 16 April 2003 04:43, George Shapovalov wrote:
> Ok, this is shaping up :).
>
> Dave: could you please submit a bug, with a short description of this
> discussion? Otherwise I am afraid this is going to be easily lost..

I would like to add that I believe the failure option is best. Further there 
is another problem with duplicate packages, that is duplicate distfile names. 
This will not work in the current portage. Maybe portage should use some 
automatic renaming feature in case of duplicates. Automatic prefixing of 
categoryname+packagename to the file should be doable. The only thing then is 
that the file unpacking code should first check for the prefixed filename. 
Using directories in distfiles (and maybe too in packages (where every file 
is in All)) could also solve possible conflicts.

Paul

-- 
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Researcher
Mail: pauldv@cs.kun.nl
Homepage: http://www.cs.kun.nl/~pauldv

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[Chris Bainbridge]

On Wednesday 16 April 2003 08:15, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> On Wednesday 16 April 2003 04:43, George Shapovalov wrote:
> > Ok, this is shaping up :).
> >
> > Dave: could you please submit a bug, with a short description of this
> > discussion? Otherwise I am afraid this is going to be easily lost..
>
> I would like to add that I believe the failure option is best. Further
> there is another problem with duplicate packages, that is duplicate
> distfile names. This will not work in the current portage. Maybe portage
> should use some automatic renaming feature in case of duplicates. Automatic
> prefixing of categoryname+packagename to the file should be doable. The
> only thing then is that the file unpacking code should first check for the
> prefixed filename. Using directories in distfiles (and maybe too in
> packages (where every file is in All)) could also solve possible conflicts.
>
> Paul

There are possible name conflicts in /usr/portage/packages/All and 
/usr/portage/distfiles. I found bug 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16222 which seems to cover it. I 
suggest that packages are stored in /usr/portage/hashes/ and given the file 
name of the hash value. This ensures uniqueness in the "all files" directory. 
/usr/portage/packages/All can then be removed and symlinks can point directly 
to the hashes directory. /usr/portage/distfiles can follow the same 
convention as packages so we have eg. 
/usr/portage/distfiles/dev-lang/package-x.y.z-r1/ as the base directory for 
files, with symlinks inside pointing to the unique files used by that 
package. 

I don't like the idea of modifying ebuilds. The ebuild writer has to check 
that every filename they download is unique, and every package has to be 
unique. Arbitrary renaming of packages causes more problems, when I wrote the 
medusa ebuild I noted that theres another medusa in gnome.. We don't want to 
be renaming packages to things like gnome-extra/gnome-medusa or 
dev-python/medusa-framework when we already have a perfectly good package 
hierarchy. 

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Re: [gentoo-dev] ebuild naming policy

[Chris PeBenito]

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You can see the naming policy in the Gentoo Development policy:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/policy.xml

Chris

On Tue, 2003-04-15 at 18:42, Dave Nellans wrote: 
> do we have an established naming policy for ebuilds, and where can i
> find it?
-- 
Chris PeBenito
<pebenito@gentoo.org>
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Hardened Gentoo Project
 
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a lot, but people built perfectly good brick walls
long before they knew why cement works."-Alan Cox

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