Naming, hacking, and policies

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hello,

Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> skribis:

> On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 03:02:00PM +0100, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice wrote:
>> I still think this change should be reverted
>
> I also think so.

I’d also be in favor of reverting.

I mean perhaps some of the renames may be less controversial than
others, but it looks like we started on the wrong foot.  I’d be in favor
of renaming at least so we can discuss things calmly, even if the
outcome were to reinstate some of these changes.

Thoughts?

A couple of things come to my mind:

  • Fundamentally, this is a very minor issue.  Each one of us should
    try hard not to spend more energy on it than on, say, testing the
    installer.  :-)

  • The problem at hand is more of a policy and working-together issue
    than a UI issue or anything like that: What’s a “trivial” change?
    What can be considered controversial?  What do we do when a
    controversial change goes in?  How do we take into account previous
    discussions (after all, these packages were very likely reviewed
    here in the first place)?  How do we adjust our documented practices
    to reflect this?  Etc.

So I think that Andreas’ proposal to clarify the naming guidelines is
the right attitude here.  Let’s take this opportunity to share and
refine our understanding of the issue, and to write it down.

Regarding the “controversial” bit, I think naming is almost always
controversial.  :-)  In other cases, by participating in the project, I
think we all have a good idea of what’s going to generate heated
discussions.  Sometimes we get that wrong, and that’s fine.  In this
case, I’d suggest that the right approach is to revert the change so
that discussion can take place without pressure.  What about adding this
to ‘HACKING’?

As for taking previous discussions into account, it’s not always easy to
do because words can get lost.  However, it’s generally a good thing to
assume that changing something that has previously passed review may
require discussion.

Thoughts?

> I am happy to make the wording clearer. But I am not sure whether replacing
> "project name" by "package name" makes a difference. What is a "package"?
> But if you think it is better, why not.
>
> We could also add "short" in front of "projet"/"package name", and maybe
> add that this usually corresponds to something like the base name of the
> tarball, the git repository name or the domain where the project is hosted.

Packages usually have a “system name” (that’s the terminology used on
Savannah) and a “pretty name”, like ‘guix’ and ‘GNU Guix’.  I believe
the intent of those guidelines was to suggest keeping the system name,
not the fancy name.  Perhaps this is what should be clarified?

Thanks,
Ludo’.