[csw-maintainers] commentary on shared library naming proposal

[Philip Brown]

On 11/18/10, Maciej (Matchek) Blizinski <maciej at opencsw.org> wrote:
> No dia 16 de Novembro de 2010 00:20, Philip Brown <phil at bolthole.com>
> escreveu:
>
>> People will usually expect to find the package by simple name. Do we
>> provide a ghost "libxyz" package that depends on the longer named one? Or
>> expect that our users will educate themselves (usually a losing
>> proposition)
>
> They will probably do something like "pkgutil -a libxyz" and find out
> the package names.

I guess I wasnt strong enough with my indirect comment about "losing
proposition" :-)
I am going to suggest a related fact, and then a choice to make.
If you disagree that the 'fact' is not true, I will change it. But if
we both agree it is true, then please treat it as 'fact' :)

Fact: there will be users that run the command  "pkgxxx install
libxyz", and if it fails, will then presume "oh. opencsw does not have
libxyz".
Or similarly, attempt to visit "www.opencsw.org/packages/libxyz", etc.
(Going to the full list of packages, and searching, is something I
personally avoid too)

I think we can both agree there exist this sort of people. the only
difference between us would be how many there are, and how important
they are.
Choice:
* we can be elitist about this, and take the attitude of, "Well, they
need to learn how to use opencsw better"
* or, we can have policies that are more accommodating to 'newbie' users.

I tend to prefer policies that favour "I've never read a manpage, and
dont want to," users.

Comments?

(We might also take the time to query our user list?)


> What do you intend to do with your comments in on the wiki page?  I
> guess we want to arrive at a clean version of the document that can
> eventually become our recommendation.

At some point I will try to clean up points from me that have been
resolved or fully answered. But may as well leave the mess for now,
since if we dont come to a mutually agreed recommendation, we'll need
to keep it for voting writeup.