[csw-maintainers] commentary on shared library naming proposal

[Dagobert Michelsen]

Hi Phil,

Am 19.11.2010 um 18:50 schrieb 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?

Having libxyz in the catalog does sound useful, but I am unsure what to
expect in this case:

- is it the latest libxyzN?
- is it the latest libxyzN together with _devel?
- is it all versions libxyzM, libxyzN, ... together with _devel?
- ...or does it directly contain legacy .so.L and depends on _devel?

The longer I think about it the more I think libxyz as a "bundle" containing
everything related to the package, whereas legacy stuff would be directly in
it as long as necessary and other things like libxyzM and _devel would be
factored out and be depend on. This would be consistent with that we
have planned for the bugtracker and it would also be useful as web-entry-point
for a software.


Best regards

  -- Dago