[csw-maintainers] Question regarding package naming, merging...

[Roger Håkansson]

Any thoughts regarding the naming and possible merging of packages?
Example: libsoup

Today we have a libsoup package which is version 1.99 and a libsoup2 
which is 2.2
I'm about to release a new libsoup package (2.4) which will include 
libraries from old libsoup and libsoup2 packages (for backwards 
compatibility until packages depending on the old ones are rereleased) 
plus a libsoup2 package which is really just a dummy with a dependency 
to libsoup so the dependency chain isn't broken.

But then I started thinking that this might need some input from some 
others, specially since there are lot of other packages that face 
similar problems.

What is the recommended package naming scheme?
Should our packages follow the naming scheme from other distributions 
(either Linux or other) "to the letter" or is it more a "is possible")

The reason why I ask is that if we were to follow other dists a 
libsoup24 would be the logical naming, but I find it rather silly to 
have that name when no other libsoup package exists.
(When the packages depending on the older versions have been upgraded, 
there is no need to keep the old packages and we certainly don't want 
anyone building new packages using the old stuff)

The same applies to other packages where there might be a package called 
vfshN(N=2,3..) but there is no longer any package called vfsh (or even 
if there is such a package, it is so old we really don't want anyone 
using it for releasing new packages)


Comments?