Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Elisamuel Resto <ryuji AT simplysam.us>]

On 4/13/10 3:50 AM, Remko van der Vossen wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 03:41:50AM -0400, Elisamuel Resto wrote:
>> On 4/13/2010 3:26 AM, Remko van der Vossen wrote:

</snip>

>> I would incline to agree, but given the example of pecl extensions for
>> php, where they often name the extension the same as the upstream
>> package. We can't have two spells with the same name now, can we? The
>> obvious step would be to prefix it, and then you would have prefixed and
>> non-prefixed spells, thus, creating a unorganized mess to my eyes.
> 
> I really don't think name clashes are that common, usually for stuff
> like language bindings the packa name actually includes a reference to
> the language, and yes, then it definately should be part of the spell
> name as well, as the spell name should just be the package name. And if
> there are clashes maybe we should rather poke the developers to name
> their package more sensibly than create unwieldy naming schemes to
> circumvent the problem.

Asking upstream to change names is rather optimistic, but I do agree
that if upstream has a name on a package, then it should.

In PHP's PECL extensions that would be fruitless, since it would require
renaming of most of their extensions. I would like to ask, at least in
PHP's case, what would you consider? Upstream wont change, and there
will be clashes. Is leaving as-is really an option? This is one of the
reasons I havn't attempted to add PECL extensions in.

I understand the point for most of the spells, but then I ask, what
about PHP's PECL extensions?

> And this doesn't prevent the problem of name clashes anyway, there'll
> still be cases where entirely different packages will have the same
> name. Granted it may be rarer but it's still going to happen.

Truth spoken and point taken. But sitting on it and optimistically
wanting upstream to change the name is rather quite hard-headed.

>> I agree with you for 80% of use-cases in these regards, but
>> language-dependent spells (especially modules for said languages) would
>> benefit from this when its time to look for spells easily.
>>
>> Sure, I can look for a spell that depends on perl and check if its a
>> module, but isn't it more convenient to just search for anything that
>> begins with `perl-'?
> 
> In my eyes, no, it would be much easier to gaze section $whatever and/or
> gaze keyword $whatever.

Perhaps for somebody used to our utilities, does `gaze search' look at
keywords by default? If so, this is viable and very attractive. If not,
this would have to be changed in order to make full use of keywords, and
in the meantime this is not attractive.

>> In regards to keywords, I would love to see keywords used more, but
>> there are tons of spells in the grimoire with generic keywords that fail
>> to represent their contents specifically.
> 
> All the more reason to start fixing up the keywords and provide ways for
> them to get used instead of kludging keywords into spell names.

This would be good indeed, but why, if you consider it such a good idea,
have you not started this discussion earlier or perhaps changed a batch
of spells to prove the point and then have the rest of us review and
comment?

-- 
Elisamuel Resto <ryuji AT simplysam.us>
Source Mage GNU/Linux Lead Developer
http://sourcemage.org -- Have a sourcerous day!