Top-level package names, UX questions

[Jamie Strandboge]

On 03/16/2015 05:31 PM, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
> On 16/03/15 15:15, Jamie Strandboge wrote:
>> Looking at the 'foo.command' bit on its own...
>>
>> Not sure if you meant this all along, but I wonder if it makes sense to say
>> after installing a developer package (eg, beuno's foo package) that:
>>
>>  * you can always refer to the command as foo.beuno.command
>>  * you may also refer to the command as foo.command
>>  * if you install another developer's foo package, you have a choice of updating
>>    what foo.command does
>>
>> That way you can always you foo.beuno.command in your scripts if you want, but
>> you still can use the shortened version.
> 
> The problem is it conflates your custom idea of what foo.command means
> with the public, community view of what foo.command is. And that will
> just be painful.
> 
> I think we either say:
> 
>  * you can co-install foo.beuno and foo.jamie and mainline foo
>  * you must use them explicitly as foo.beuno.command and
> foo.jaimie.command and foo.command
> 
> OR
> 
>  * you can only install one foo at a time (choose foo.beuno or foo.jamie)

Ah right, if we went this route, the choice is on what to install, not what to
alias (locally).

>  * you must use it as foo.command
> 
> While the latter requires choices and decisions, it forces convergence
> over time and is always more readable. We would rename as needed between
> LTS versions, or during devel between them, but not inside an LTS lifetime.
> 
+1

I've had a nagging suspicion it may limit us (note past tense). Eg, if
foo.sabdfl and foo.jdstrand have services that could be useful on the same
system. I can't come up with a perfect example since this is more of a hunch,
but consider an httpd server that supports php and another that supports python
(httpd.php and httpd.python) and I'd have on listen on port 80 and the other on
8080 if they could be installed together.

But after thinking about it some more, there is nothing saying that the package
name must be 'httpd'; developers could instead name the above two
'httpd-php.bar' and 'httpd-python.baz' and things are fine.

-- 
Jamie Strandboge                 http://www.ubuntu.com/

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