Re: Opposition to new single-letter package name "t"

[Raghav Gururajan <rg@raghavgururajan.name>]

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Hi Mark!

> Yesterday, an obscure package called "t" was added to Guix.  We should
> reject such short package names in Guix unless there's a very compelling
> reason to keep them.
> 
> The problem with single-letter package names is that the probability of
> collisions is far too high.  Due to the so-called "birthday paradox", it
> only takes 5 such package names before the probability of a collision
> gets close to 50%.  Given this, it's an act of extraordinary hubris to
> claim a single-letter name for one's package.
> 
> We've already had at least one collision involving 2-letter names.  It
> takes 26 such names before the probability of collision reaches ~50%.  A
> few years ago, someone wrote a tool based on Guile for "programmatic
> computer-aided design" and called it "Ao".  It turns out that name is
> already taken by a cross platform audio library which is in Guix.
> 
> We have precedent for renaming single-letter package names in Guix.  We
> have already changed "s" to "s-shell", and "v" to "vlang".  Let's choose
> a longer name for "t".  Here's the package definition:

Makes complete sense. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. :-)

> Any suggestions for a longer name?  Maybe "t-organizer" or
> "t-todo-list-manager"?

How about t-cli?

@Jorge WDYT?

Regards,
RG.


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