[arch-general] virtualbox additions package naming

[Heiko Baums]

Am Wed, 20 Jul 2011 05:48:34 +0800
schrieb Ray Rashif <schiv at archlinux.org>:

> Why? Because, 'virtualbox-additions' would be just as confusing as
> 'virtualbox-guest-additions' to a newcomer.

Not quite. When I was a newcomer to virtualbox I first read something
about it incl. on upstream's website. There I found the Virtualbox
Guest Additions - it was only an iso and nothing else - and found out
what they are for. When searching the Arch Linux repos I found
virtualbox-additions and virtualbox-guest-additions and I was really
confused when virtualbox-guest-additions didn't do what I expected it
to do (downloading and storing this iso). And then I asked myself: What
is that and what is virtualbox-additions about which I never read
anything particularly not on upstream's website?

So I think a correct naming scheme is pretty important particularly
for newcomers.

> To an existing user, a
> name change may look good, but would introduce a one-time annoying
> breakage. We cannot justify the extra work and that breakage in order
> to introduce this name change, since it won't be a problem to maintain
> the current name (which isn't "wrong") in the first place, while there
> are no other packages or conditions _requiring_ us to name the package
> as such.

What breakage? People just have to run once:
# pacman -R virtualbox-addtitions
# pacman -S virtualbox-guest-additions

The same for the other Arch specific guest additions.

I think entering those two commands is worth the effort. Do one hard
break once and everything is clear.

Btw., at least yaourt and I think also pacman itself will inform the
user after a system upgrade that the package virtualbox-additions is
not in the repos anymore. And an announcement before doing these
changes will do the rest. Maybe such an announcement could be added to
post_install of virtualbox which is necessary and will be upgraded as
usual anyway. If you then add replaces=('virtualbox-additions') to
virtualbox-guest-additions everthing is perfect.

I don't see a problem.


> I don't think you understood this. Versioned replaces will solve
> replacements (see ML discussion linked in BR).

What is BR?

I guess I understood this. I think this is a non-existing issue here,
because I'm pretty sure that you won't need a versioned replaces and
see above.

Heiko