[csw-maintainers] pkgname limit 20 chars?

[Philip Brown]

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 06:34:19PM +0200, Sebastian Kayser wrote:
> Ok, just so that i get it right (please correct me if am wrong):
> 
> 1) The software name is the one users should work with and we can/should
> keep it in a consistent, readable, and "no-surprise" way.

yup.

> This means i
> can keep pm_datetimetimezone as software name for the DateTime::TimeZone
> perl module.

Yup. There IS also a limit on software name, for sanity purposes. it's just
longer.


> 2) The package name is limited (by us) to 20 chars, so that we need to
> come up with a way to condense package names > 20 chars.
> 
>    pm_datetimetimezone 	-> CSWpmdatetimetz
>    pm_xmlatomsimplefeed -> CSWpmxmlatomsimplefd

I dont think it is beneficial to try to enforce "one true way of
shortening".
It depends on the software name. Some collections of softwares obviously


> Question: Is this self-imposed 20 char limitation worth have
> discrepancies between software and package names?

yes.

we've had it for 6 years. It's reasonable. There's no decent reason to
uproot the world to change this,just because a few software authors are
insane.


>  Although i install packages via pkg-get or pkgutil and by
> their software names, i often find myself dealing with packages by their
> package names afterwards (pkginfo, pkgrm, /var/sadm/pkg/...). IMHO just
> a source of possible confusion.

as a side topic: what would make you have to do that sort of thing less?
[as a regular sysadmin, not a pkg maintainer? ]