[POLICY] Binary vs source package names

[Liam Healy]

I don't have any Debian packages, but I don't like this.
I've come to dislike the "cl-" prefix for anything, because it
implies that the language in which the software is written in is the
most important thing.  I don't see "c-" "perl-" etc. for other
languages, I don't see why lisp should be any different.
To non-lisp users, it seems lisp is a freak,
to be avoided (yes, python has "py" but I don't like that either).
As for being a library, I view everything as a library, particularly
in lisp.  Software should be as easy for other software to use
as it is for people; that is something that lisp facilitates.

I can see the need to call out lisp when the software in question
is an interface to a foreign library, but there are other ways to
do this.  I have two libraries like this, one that starts "cl-" and
one that ends in "l".  It wouldn't be possible to name the second
"cl-" anyway because there is already an unrelated package
with that name.

Why is there a need for a policy at all?  Why not just let the
authors name the packages as is traditional?

Liam

On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Luca Capello <luca at pca.it> wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> While trying to solve all the CL bugs [1], I noticed that we should
> define a clear policy about package names WRT the cl- prefix.  This will
> be then part of the Common Lisp packaging policy I dreamt of [2].
>
> My proposal is that "libraries" should have the cl- prefix at least for
> the binary package names, since this is very similar to the lib*
> packages.  With "library" I mean all those software which is designed to
> be used by other packages and not as a stand-alone program.  E.g.,
> arnesi [3] or cl-irc [4].
>
> However, binary package names for software which is intended as a
> stand-alone program should not be prefixed by cl- if they don't already
> have it.  Whenever is possible, the source package name should reflect
> the upstream one, thus without the cl- prefix if upstream doesn't have
> it.  This is indeed the case for most of the software in this group
> (e.g. SBCL [5] or StumpWM [6]), but not for all (e.g. Hunchentoot [7]
> binary package is called cl-hunchentoot in Debian).
>
> If no one disagrees, I'll try to correct the packages I find starting
> From one week from now.
>
> Thx, bye,
> Gismo / Luca
>
> Footnotes:
> [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?which=maint&data=pkg-common-lisp-devel%40lists.alioth.debian.org&archive=no&version=&dist=unstable
> [2] http://common-lisp.net/pipermail/cl-debian/2007-October/002882.html
> [3] http://common-lisp.net/project/bese/arnesi.html
> [4] http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-irc/
> [5] http://www.sbcl.org
> [6] http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/
> [7] http://weitz.de/hunchentoot/
>
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