Distro name

Distro name

[Ludovic Courtès]

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Hello!

And merry new year!  :-)

The (distro ...) name for modules of the distro wasn’t meant to last.
Initially, I thought we could find a name for the distro, and substitute
that name to “distro”.  Possible names:

  • Jinn, as in “Jinn is not Nixpkgs/NixOS”;
  • Guixotic, as Guix + Exotic (suggested by RMS).

However, I’ve come to think that we don’t necessarily need a separate
name for the distro, but we do need a name for the module name space.

The obvious solution would be (gnu ...).  There’d be modules like
(gnu packages openssl), which does not mean that OpenSSL is a GNU
package, but I think that should be clear in this context.  Anyway,
that’s the option that I like the most currently.

Thoughts?  Ideas?

Thanks,
Ludo’.

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Re: Distro name

[Jason Self]

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Why not call the distro "GNU"? :) After almost 30 years it's about 
time.

Re: Distro name

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Jason,

"Jason Self" <jason@bluehome.net> skribis:

> Why not call the distro "GNU"? :) After almost 30 years it's about 
> time.

The problem is that “GNU” is (supposedly) synonym for GNU/Hurd, or at
least for the operating system.  I think it makes sense to distinguish
the OS from the distro, no?

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: Distro name

[Jason Self]

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Ludovic Courtès said:

> The problem is that “GNU” is (supposedly) synonym for GNU/Hurd, or
> at least for the operating system.

> I think it makes sense to distinguish the OS from the distro, no?

Hmm. It might make sense to differentiate when a third party is
involved, but not when the GNU Project itself is doing it.
(Reference "GNU Hurd is not the same as GNU/Hurd" [0].)

"However, such third-party distributions are distinct from what an
official complete GNU system release would be; and thus we often call
them GNU/Hurd for clarity, similar to GNU/Linux or GNU/kFreeBSD."

Does it make sense to say "Yes it's all GNU (except for any non-GNU
dependencies that those GNU packages may have), yes it uses the GNU
Project infrastructure, yes it's being worked on by GNU folks, but
not it's not GNU. We're distributing something else."

I guess it depends on what you define an "an official complete GNU
system release" to be. That would ultimately have to come from RMS,
of course, but if the only difference is the kernel (but both kernels
are official GNU packages) and the distro offered the option of using
both of them, the line seems perhaps a little bit more blurry in that
regard.

[0] http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/news/2011-q2-ps.html

Re: Distro name

[Ludovic Courtès]

"Jason Self" <jason@bluehome.net> skribis:

> Hmm. It might make sense to differentiate when a third party is 
> involved, but not when the GNU Project itself is doing it. 

[...]

> I guess it depends on what you define an "an official complete GNU 
> system release" to be. That would ultimately have to come from RMS, 
> of course, but if the only difference is the kernel (but both kernels 
> are official GNU packages) and the distro offered the option of using 
> both of them, the line seems perhaps a little bit more blurry in that 
> regard.

Hmm yes, that makes sense (and indeed, the longer-term goal is to
support several kernels.)

That would comfort me in choosing the (gnu ...) name space.

Ludo’.

Re: Distro name

[Dmitri Paduchikh]

Jason Self wrote:

> Why not call the distro "GNU"? :) After almost 30 years it's about 
> time.

For 30 years "GNU" has acquired much broader meaning than just a distro.
You will have to differentiate distro name from this broader meaning
constantly qualifying that it is Guix distro which you are talking
about. And it will be harder to search in Google.

-- 
With best regards
Dmitri Paduchikh

Re: Distro name

[Jason Self]

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Dmitri Paduchikh <dpaduchikh@gmail.com> wrote ..
> For 30 years "GNU" has acquired much broader meaning than just a 
> distro.
> You will have to differentiate distro name from this broader meaning
> constantly qualifying that it is Guix distro which you are talking
> about. And it will be harder to search in Google.

This isn't anything new though: There's The GNU Project, consisting 
of RMS as the head in his capacity as Chief GNUisance, Karl Berry as 
Assistant Chief GNUisance, along with various GNU Maintainers that 
collectively work on The GNU Operating System, which is itself made 
up of individual the GNU Packages maintained by the respective 
Maintainer.

It's not much different that, say, Debian: The Debian Project is made 
up of Debian Developers that work on the Debian GNU/Linux 
distribution. The project & distribution are considered separate 
entities but could you imagine that the Debian Developers would would 
ever make a separate distribution called, say, "Not Debian" and say 
it's unoffical and that the Debian distrro and the Not Debian distro 
are two different systems? Wouldn't it seem strange?

I suppose it depends on how you view the role, which could probably 
be seen from a few different directions: Is it to make a GNU package 
that makes an unofficial GNU distribution (of which there are 
hundreds so this in't much different, except for having a more 
interesting package manager), or is it that the GNU Maintainers are 
using GNU Project infrastructure to work on an official GNU package 
called GNU Guix, and getting everything packaged up for a proper 
release of the GNU Opearating System (finally.) The actions necessary 
to accomplish each seems to be the (nearly) the same, with the only 
difference being what you call it.

Re: Distro name

[Dmitri Paduchikh]

Ludovic Courtès wrote:

> The (distro ...) name for modules of the distro wasn’t meant to last.
> Initially, I thought we could find a name for the distro, and substitute
> that name to “distro”.  Possible names:

>   • Jinn, as in “Jinn is not Nixpkgs/NixOS”;
>   • Guixotic, as Guix + Exotic (suggested by RMS).

These seem rather baroque to me. Especially the reference to nixpkgs in
such a context. The name "Unix" is pretty much widespread so the
abbreviation "GNU" can be seen as ingenious. nixpkgs is much less known
and hence this looks weird, IMHO.

I would propose Guix World as a externally visible name, and just world
or distro for internal namespace usage.

> However, I’ve come to think that we don’t necessarily need a separate
> name for the distro, but we do need a name for the module name space.

It would be good to have name for distro. How would you refer to it
otherwise?

> The obvious solution would be (gnu ...).  There’d be modules like
> (gnu packages openssl), which does not mean that OpenSSL is a GNU
> package, but I think that should be clear in this context.  Anyway,
> that’s the option that I like the most currently.

It may be clear, but your example demonstrates internal inconsistency of
such naming. Is Guix intended for GNU software only? If not, then be
fair to all the others. ;)

-- 
With best regards
Dmitri Paduchikh

Re: Distro name

[Ludovic Courtès]

Dmitri Paduchikh <dpaduchikh@gmail.com> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>
>> The (distro ...) name for modules of the distro wasn’t meant to last.
>> Initially, I thought we could find a name for the distro, and substitute
>> that name to “distro”.  Possible names:
>
>>   • Jinn, as in “Jinn is not Nixpkgs/NixOS”;
>>   • Guixotic, as Guix + Exotic (suggested by RMS).
>
> These seem rather baroque to me. Especially the reference to nixpkgs in
> such a context. The name "Unix" is pretty much widespread so the
> abbreviation "GNU" can be seen as ingenious. nixpkgs is much less known
> and hence this looks weird, IMHO.

Right, but the meaning doesn’t have to be explained all the time,
esp. since jinn is also a noun.

> I would propose Guix World as a externally visible name, and just world
> or distro for internal namespace usage.

Hmm.

>> However, I’ve come to think that we don’t necessarily need a separate
>> name for the distro, but we do need a name for the module name space.
>
> It would be good to have name for distro. How would you refer to it
> otherwise?

Guix?

>> The obvious solution would be (gnu ...).  There’d be modules like
>> (gnu packages openssl), which does not mean that OpenSSL is a GNU
>> package, but I think that should be clear in this context.  Anyway,
>> that’s the option that I like the most currently.
>
> It may be clear, but your example demonstrates internal inconsistency of
> such naming. Is Guix intended for GNU software only? If not, then be
> fair to all the others. ;)

The Guile module name space is different from the actual software names,
so I’m not too worried actually.

Thanks for your feedback!

Ludo’.

Re: Distro name

[Nikita Karetnikov]

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> It may be clear, but your example demonstrates internal inconsistency of
> such naming. Is Guix intended for GNU software only? If not, then be
> fair to all the others. ;)

Good point.

Nikita

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Re: Distro name

[Andreas Enge]

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Am Mittwoch, 2. Januar 2013 schrieb Ludovic Courtès:
> And merry new year!  :-)

Thanks, happy new year to all the guix hackers!

> The (distro ...) name for modules of the distro wasn’t meant to last.
> Initially, I thought we could find a name for the distro, and substitute
> that name to “distro”.  Possible names:
>   • Jinn, as in “Jinn is not Nixpkgs/NixOS”;
>   • Guixotic, as Guix + Exotic (suggested by RMS).

Bike shedding, marvellous!

> However, I’ve come to think that we don’t necessarily need a separate
> name for the distro, but we do need a name for the module name space.

Do we need a namespace "distro"? So far, there is only the sub-namespace 
"distro/packages". Could this not be contracted into the very prosaic 
"packages"? The distro would then simply be called "guix", no?

Maybe "gig" - "guix is guix", or "gis is gig", a recursive acronym with an 
exponential growth (to make fun of terminal recursion) and a certain zen 
appeal :-)

Andreas

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Re: Distro name

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> skribis:

> Am Mittwoch, 2. Januar 2013 schrieb Ludovic Courtès:

[...]

>> However, I’ve come to think that we don’t necessarily need a separate
>> name for the distro, but we do need a name for the module name space.
>
> Do we need a namespace "distro"? So far, there is only the sub-namespace 
> "distro/packages". Could this not be contracted into the very prosaic 
> "packages"?

You mean (guix packages ...) or (packages ...)?  The latter seems like a
bad idea, because it could collide with something else, and it’s not
sufficiently descriptive (it could be confused with Guile’s guildhall
packaging system, for instance.)

> The distro would then simply be called "guix", no?
>
> Maybe "gig" - "guix is guix", or "gis is gig", a recursive acronym with an 
> exponential growth (to make fun of terminal recursion) and a certain zen 
> appeal :-)

Heh, OK.  Food for thought.  :-)

Ludo’.

Re: Distro name

[Dmitri Paduchikh]

One more choice is "gemmate" or "germ". Seems to be appropriate for
collection of packages.

-- 
With best regards
Dmitri Paduchikh

Re: Distro name

[Andreas Enge]

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Am Mittwoch, 2. Januar 2013 schrieb Ludovic Courtès:
> You mean (guix packages ...) or (packages ...)?  The latter seems like a
> bad idea, because it could collide with something else, and it’s not
> sufficiently descriptive (it could be confused with Guile’s guildhall
> packaging system, for instance.)

Maybe guixpackages? I just noticed that the "distro" directory only 
contains a subdirectory "packages", so thought this could be collapsed.

Andreas

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Re: Distro name

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> skribis:

> Am Mittwoch, 2. Januar 2013 schrieb Ludovic Courtès:
>> You mean (guix packages ...) or (packages ...)?  The latter seems like a
>> bad idea, because it could collide with something else, and it’s not
>> sufficiently descriptive (it could be confused with Guile’s guildhall
>> packaging system, for instance.)
>
> Maybe guixpackages? I just noticed that the "distro" directory only 
> contains a subdirectory "packages", so thought this could be collapsed.

No, because eventually there’ll be (distro system ...) too–the
equivalent of what NixOS is to Nixpkgs, if you see what i mean.

Ludo’.

Re: Distro name

[Andreas Enge]

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Am Donnerstag, 3. Januar 2013 schrieb Ludovic Courtès:
> No, because eventually there’ll be (distro system ...) too–the
> equivalent of what NixOS is to Nixpkgs, if you see what i mean.

Okay, I see.

Andreas

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Re: Distro name

[Nikita Karetnikov]

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Hello,

Why do we need a separate name for the distro?

I'm pretty happy with the current situation.

Nikita

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Re: Distro name

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) skribis:

> However, I’ve come to think that we don’t necessarily need a separate
> name for the distro, but we do need a name for the module name space.
>
> The obvious solution would be (gnu ...).  There’d be modules like
> (gnu packages openssl), which does not mean that OpenSSL is a GNU
> package, but I think that should be clear in this context.  Anyway,
> that’s the option that I like the most currently.

It seems we went on discussing a distro name, but that turned out not to
solve the module name space issue.  :-)

So I’ll rename the (distro ...) modules to (gnu ...), because that’s
nicer and more meaningful (“a distro of the GNU system”).

Thanks!

Ludo’.

Re: Distro name

[Andreas Enge]

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Am Dienstag, 15. Januar 2013 schrieb Ludovic Courtès:
> So I’ll rename the (distro ...) modules to (gnu ...), because that’s
> nicer and more meaningful (“a distro of the GNU system”).

Even though it contains non-gnu packages? For now, distro seems clearer to 
me.

Andreas

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Re: Distro name

[Ludovic Courtès]

Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> skribis:

> Am Dienstag, 15. Januar 2013 schrieb Ludovic Courtès:
>> So I’ll rename the (distro ...) modules to (gnu ...), because that’s
>> nicer and more meaningful (“a distro of the GNU system”).
>
> Even though it contains non-gnu packages?

Well, the famous “GNU System” was always supposed to contain non-GNU
packages.

Plus we’re just talking about a module name space, and using ‘gnu’ at
the beginning is just a way to claim ownership of that name space, not
of the packages that happen to be provided by those modules.

And module names are not really read from left to right; the naming
convention is usually (OWNER FEATURE), or (OWNER CATEGORY FEATURE).

This is all fairly meta.  :-)

How does that sound?

Ludo’.

Re: Distro name

[Andreas Enge]

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Am Mittwoch, 16. Januar 2013 schrieb Ludovic Courtès:
> Plus we’re just talking about a module name space, and using ‘gnu’ at
> the beginning is just a way to claim ownership of that name space, not
> of the packages that happen to be provided by those modules.

Okay, fair enough.

Andreas

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Re: Distro name

[Ludovic Courtès]

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) skribis:

> So I’ll rename the (distro ...) modules to (gnu ...), because that’s
> nicer and more meaningful (“a distro of the GNU system”).

Done!

Ludo’.