Naoki wrote:
Do we like uppercase letters in package names?
Depends on how you define who "we" are. I personally hate package names with uppercase in them, wether they're all uppercase, mixed case, or CamelTextNames.
When we switched to X.Org X11, I managed to cleverly assimilate the mixed case by naming the packaging xorg-x11, instead of the hideous looking: X.Org-X11 or perhaps something worse. ;o)
I'm not trolling but I would like to know if there is a documented reason for this. It does cause occasional minor annoyances and goes
There is no standard whatsoever. It's more or less up to whoever is creating an rpm package to decide how to name it.
In general, most rpm packagers tend to use the upstream tarball name when possible unless it strays greatly from common practice. Others may choose to name it something that looks aesthetically pleasing to them, or which matches the end-user visible product naming.
For example, I've seen "Real Player" rpm packages named:
realplayer-x.y-z.i386.rpm
and I've seen:
RealPlayer-x.y-z.i386.rpm
In my personal opinion, and feel free to differ (I'm sure there are many who do, or everyone would be doing it the same way already), I find all lowercase packagenames easier to handle from an administration viewpoint, and for querying the rpm database for things, etc.
It ultimately is up to whoever is the one making the packages though, and wether they feel strongly about it one way or the other, or can be influenced to do it one way or another.
against the de facto standard. Of course it does ensure your packages are at the top of the list ;)
Not really. It depends on what LC_COLLATE is among other things. Some locales seem to sort all capitalized names first, then all lowercase like ABCabc, while other locales seem to sort AaBbCc or aAbBcC.
Thankfully we haven't seen rpm packages named things like:
0000-foo-1.0-1.rpm
or
__-==[R34lPl4y3r]==-___-10.1-3.i386.rpm
I'm sure that horrid day will eventually arrive though. ;o)