Summary of the 2008-03-11 Packaging Committee meeting

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Fri, 2008-03-14 at 07:42 -0500, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> Alexander Boström wrote:
> > tor 2008-03-13 klockan 09:41 -0500 skrev Toshio Kuratomi:
> >> Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > 
> >>> Transliterate/translate them to ASCII.
> >>>
> >> This is a proposal I am strongly -1 to.
> > 
> > Ok, then allow the full Unicode range in Name:.
> > 
> > But a decision needs to be made. Should it be possible to do all command
> > line system management with only knowledge of the basic latin character
> > set? Or even: Should it be possible to do all command line system
> > management with _no_ knowledge if the latin character set?
No 

>  (That would
> > mean transliterating "yum" and "ls".)
> > 
> > Probably the answers are "yes" and "uhm, perhaps if someone figures out
> > how".
> > 
> > Then the output of the command line tools (rpm -q, yum list, ls *.rpm
> > etc.) needs to be such that everyone who can type the command can also
> > manually copy the output from the screen to the keyboard. The command
> > can of course show several names, at the same time or using different
> > options.
> > 
> I keep reading what you are asking here but have yet to find an 
> interpretation that I can think reasonable.  So let me give you my 
> thoughts  and then maybe we can meet in the middle.  The questions:
> 
> 1) Should the default command-line system administration commands use 
> filenames that are ASCII only?
Depends on how you mean this question.

* If you mean that all "default command-line tools" shall be named in
ASCII, then the answer is more or less:

http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap03.html#tag_03_230

...
3.230 Name
In the shell command language, a word consisting solely of underscores,
digits, and alphabetics from the portable character set. The first
character of a name is not a digit. 

Note:
        The Portable Character Set is defined in detail in Portable
        Character Set.


C.f.:
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/basedefs/xbd_chap06.html#tag_06_01


* If you are referring to "should all installation-tools" (rpm, yum,
apt, etc.) be able to process utf-8 filenames, then my answer is:
Implementation detail. Nothing blocks these tools from doing so.


* If you are referring to "should all *rpm's" use ASCII file names, then
my answer is: Yes. All rpm-filenames must use ASCII file names (rsp.
from POSIX-portable charset), because only these are guaranteed to work
everywhere.

BTW: Also compare for Debian's policy on package names:
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-f-Package


Ralf