[Distutils] [Catalog-sig] We need to make a decision wrt distribution names

[Jim Fulton]

On Jul 24, 2007, at 9:56 PM, Stephen Waterbury wrote:

> Phillip J. Eby wrote:
>> At 01:09 PM 7/24/2007 -0400, Stephen Waterbury wrote:
>>> Actually, I wasn't confused.  :)  I'd suggest a convention that  
>>> allows
>>> a distribution "title" (e.g., "Zope", "Twisted", etc.) and a
>>> distribution "name" that would simply be the name of the
>>> distribution's top-level package (e.g., "zope", "twisted", etc.),
>>
>> This proposal would rule out namespace packages ...
>
> I thought about that.  The rule for namespace distributions would  
> be to
> allow dotted names, e.g. "zope.interface", "zope.schema", etc., as are
> often currently used.  In fact, in a real sense, those *are* the
> top-level packages of namespace packages.

Those are the top-level packages of those distributions.

>> in addition to being
>> incompatible with existing distribution names.
>
> I thought the point was to come up with a new distribution naming
> convention, because there currently isn't one -- but the naming
> convention has to be consistent with all existing distribution
> names?  Seems a tough constraint.

No, my proposal was to define:

- Rules for constructing *legal* (as opposed to "good") project names

- Rules for variations on project names.

...

>> -- a distribution may contain zero or 
>> more packages (even top-level) ...
>
> Indeed, and I've always disliked multiple top-level packages in an
> [installable unit].

No offense intended, but this seems arbitrary to me.  Note that not  
only can a distribution contain more than one package, it can contain  
no packages.

>> *and* a single package (top-level or
>> otherwise) may be spread over more than one distribution.
>
> IMO, a package that's spread over more than one distribution should
> probably not be top-level in both distributions.  :)

Phillip was (I think) referring to namespace packages.  Namespace  
packages are a very important tool for maintaining some sanity in  
package naming.

Jim

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