[csw-maintainers] Change python modules catalog names to have a py_ prefix (instead of just py)?

[Sebastian Kayser]

Philip Brown wrote on 23.09.2009 22:43:
> On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Philip Brown <phil at bolthole.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 1:37 AM, Sebastian Kayser <skayser at opencsw.org> wrote:
>>> Resuming the pyyaml example: pyyaml is a library (python modules only),
>>> thus the software name would be py_yaml. This is similar to Debian's
>>> policy [1], just that they prefix module packages with "python-". In
>>> their case, pyyaml is packaged as python-yaml [2].
> 
> As an interesting contrast,both Gentoo and Ubuntu seem to package it
> as "pyyaml" :-)
> 
> Eerm.. and debian does too?
> 
> or at least.. it has a "source package" named "pyyaml".. but a "binary
> package" named "python-yaml" ?!!!
> http://packages.debian.org/source/lenny/pyyaml

The source package name corresponds to the upstream name. The binary
package name is where (i imagine) the distribution tries to create a
consistent user experience. Plus, one source package can result in
multiple binary packages, but that's another topic.

You are right, Gentoo simply passes the upstream name pyyaml [1]. Ubuntu
(like Debian) renames it to python-yaml [2] though.

> pyyaml is a well-known exception to the usual py_ convention

If we follow that road we leave it up to every maintainer to decide what
is "well-known". Plus there might be as many "well-known" (pygtk,
pysqlite, pyxml, etc. [3,4,5]) module packages as non-"well-known"
packages, which gets us half py* and half py_* packages. Not to mention,
packages like SOAPy/SOAPpy where you wouldn't even have the common py
prefix.

I should have detailed Debian's python policy WRT module packages a bit
more, because it leaves pleasant little room for interpretation. A
module package name is constructed according to

  py_<modulename>

Here, <modulename> is absolutely non-ambiguous; one refers to this name
when importing a python module. Would a general policy like this (also
applied to pyyaml, modulename: yaml) hurt? I don't think so.

Sebastian

[1] http://gentoo-portage.com/dev-python/pyyaml
[2] http://packages.ubuntu.com/karmic/python-yaml
[3] http://www.pygtk.org/
[4] http://oss.itsystementwicklung.de/trac/pysqlite/
[5] http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyxml/