Python package naming guidelines

Timothy Selivanow timothy.selivanow at virtualxistenz.com
Thu Apr 24 22:37:41 UTC 2008


I feel this is more nit-picking, but I'm currently working on packaging
the following items (python/zope names) and need some direction:

zc.buildout
zope.proxy
ZConfig
zdaemon
zope.testing
ZODB3

I haven't exactly liked the current naming conventions, as they leave
way too much variation while still being "acceptable".  E.g., a package
I have already done, pysvn, could have been named "python-pysvn" or
"pysvn".  If it had been used as "import svn", I would have no problems
calling it "python-svn", as that would denote that it is a python
package having something to do with SVN (since SVN is already a
well-known entity), but upstream calls itself "pysvn" while also using
that as the python package name, so calling it "python-pysvn" seemed
redundant.  However, with the above, there seems to be more ambiguity.

Adding to my naming troubles, there is already a package for
zope.interface, which is a dependency of ZODB3, and it's name is
python-zope-interface.  The problem I am having is that it seems to me
that if an entity is fairly standalone, i.e. there is no ambiguity
whether or not it is a python (or any other language)
library/application, that the "python" prefix would be dropped.  We
don't currently call TurboGears, "python-TurboGears" (yet there are
other turbo-related libs that follow the python prefix scheme, e.g.
python-turbokid and python-turbocheeta).

Really, I'm asking the Python consuming portion of the Fedora Community
what they would rather see.  I can also take this up on the packaging
list, but thought I'd ask here first because potentially it's the people
on this list that would be consuming these packages.

Would it be:

python-zc-buildout
python-zope-proxy
python-ZConfig
python-zdaemon
python-zope-testing
python-ZODB3
python-zope (thrown in to add contrast, and I'm still working on
packaging it...)

Or the above without the prefix?


It seems to me that there should be a more firm guideline that takes
into account python applications, python only frameworks/libs, and
python lib ports (these seem to be the bulk of how a name would be
determined).


--Tim
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