Any arguments for keeping Yum case-sensitive?

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 03/08/2011 05:53 PM, Michael Hennebry wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Mar 2011, Fernando Cassia wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 9:49 AM, Tim<ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au>  wrote:
>>> But that's hardly a
>>> justification for wanting case sensitive file systems.
>>
>> OMG you're questioning one of the pilars of the *nix religion!!
>>
>> Watch out for the flood of responses telling you that is THE WAY IT
>> IS, and how things are supposed to work. ;)
>
> Whether yum and rpm should be case-sensitive and whether file
> systems should be case-sensitive are distinct questions.
Agreed.

Besides this, on many systems, case-insensitivity is less a feature, but 
a side-effect of history and/or limitations of the implementation :/

> An ascii names-only file system could probably be case insensitive.
Though some users may find case-insensitive files systems useful, they 
impose problems in many other occasions, e.g. to programming and scripting.

Classic situation: User tells a program to "save to xxxx.txt", but 
filesystem generates "XXXX.txt" - Which file should a 
shell-script/makefile expect?

> As others have noted, non-English languages would present problems.
Correct - Another classic example: Try to capitalize a German 'ß' 
("sharp S" - Until recently it did not have a captialization, and even 
though it officially has one, nobody uses it)

> For all I know, some English variants might also.
>
> As I see it, within the current system,
> a case-insensitive variant of rpm would:
> collect all the names from the various repositories.
> hash them in a case-insensitive manner
> hash user-provided names in the same manner
> perform case-insensitive and case sensitive compares
>
> Is that practical?

No ... it would severely complicate things.

What could be practical is equipping yum or other front ends with some 
more "intelligence"/"heuristics" when checking user requests.

Ralf