Re: guidelines for package names (namespaces?)

[Attila Lendvai <attila@lendvai.name>]

> Or GNU Guix maintainers may want to consider some type of name space
> support in the package name space because I think name collisions will
> be more and more likely as more packages are submitted for inclusion
> in Guix.


a related issue is that currently there are two parallel registries for guix packages:

 1) module-global variables in the guile module system

 2) the reified package registry of guix.

the relationship between these two is not clear, there are no formal rules, or even guidelines. they are pretty much orthogonal.

i don't have a specific issue with this, besides that it was rather confusing for me as a newcomer, and that it bothers the gut instinct of the engineer inside me.

the idea of namespaces is nothing new, and has already been solved by 1). i'm not sure about all the implications, but i think picking 1) and dropping 2) is worth considering. it would automatically keep track of a namespace hierarchy, and the guix GUI would have enough data to act intelligently in situations like package-name clashes.

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• attila lendvai
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