[arch-general] package name foo vs libfoo (eg. clutter vs libclutter)

[Ray Rashif]

On 4 August 2010 03:55, Sven-Hendrik Haase <sh at lutzhaase.com> wrote:
>  On 03.08.2010 23:21, Andre "Osku" Schmidt wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> this may be a minor issue, but it's bugging me so much that i had to
>> write it here. and please link me to any previous discussion if this
>> was asked before, i was kinda lazy to really search and
>> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Packaging_Standards didn't
>> mention anything about it.
>>
>> is there any rule on how to name packages ?
>>
>> lets take clutter as an example. it's named "clutter" everywhere in
>> upstream, git, tarball, docs etc. but, it only builds libraries, and
>> names those libclutter* (and really is only usable as library)
>>
>> so why are these (or only this?) packages named foo and not libfoo ?
>>
>> cheers
>> .andre
>>
>> ps. im here to fix, not flame :)
>>
>
> Arch, unlike other distros, names packages after what upstream names
> their software. Thus, clutter is named clutter because upstream calls it
> that. libinfinity is named libinfinity because upstream calls it that.
>
> Prepending "lib" to everything also seems silly to me. Some lib packages
> might not purely be libs. For instance, one of my packages, ogre, is
> mainly a lib for 3D development but it has a lot of stuff (media, docs,
> samples, tutorials) that regular libs do not. What should it be called
> in the "lib" scheme? libogre (Debian does that) or just ogre? sdkogre
> perhaps? If we just name it ogre, we will have no problems at all and
> people will easily be able to find the package they are searching by
> just following the name upstream gave to their stuff.
>
> This also goes hand in hand with the philosophy of living close to upstream.

My suggestion in order of priority:

- Upstream project name *
- Upstream tarball name

* For some libraries, their project name is just "foo". In that case,
if I see that the resulting package would contain nothing the end-user
would run/use (as a binary/executable), then I name it "libfoo" (often
the tarball name).

You can always approach upstream with regards to naming a distributed
package of their software.


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