Re: 05/15: gnu: wesnoth: Rename package to the-battle-for-wesnoth.

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

Pierre Neidhardt <address@hidden> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Apologies if I missed a previous discussion on this topic, but… I’m
>> skeptical about the renames.  I assume that the original names were
>> those commonly used in distributions, which in itself may be a good
>> reason to keep them.
>
> Names may vary a lot across distributions.  Especially when it comes to
> games, since they tend to have more exotic titles.
>
> If the majority of distributions decides on a poor name, we don't have
> to repeat the same mistake ;)

I agree, but there’s also a tension between that and not violating the
“principle of least surprise”.  Sometimes the latter outweighs the
former.

>> Those names are also used upstream in some cases: the tarball for
>> wesnoth is called “westnoth*.tar.gz”, for example, and the GitHub
>> project of L’Abbaye des morts is “abbayedesmorts” (no ‘l’).  Like our
>> naming guidelines say (info "(guix) Package Naming"), we should try to
>> stick to the upstream name.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
> I think it's important to ask "why should we name a package this way."
> What's the rationale behind a package name?

I agree with what you’re saying but (1) we’re talking about package
name, which are different from fully spelled out “fancy names” (like
“L’Abbaye des morts”).

For package names, our policy is to follow upstream’s own package name.
For The Battle of Westnoth, it’s “westnoth”.

By doing that, we make the user’s lives easier in that they may already
be familiar with this short name.  If, instead, we try to roll our own
that neither distros nor upstream uses, then we’re not helping people.

Completion helps, I agree, but not everyone uses Helm either.  If you’re
in Bash and type “guix package -i w<TAB>” and don’t see “westnoth”,
you’re unhappy, and user unhappiness is bad.  :-)

In a GUI things may be different because the package name doesn’t matter
that much.

Thanks,
Ludo’.