Any arguments for keeping Yum case-sensitive?

[Michael Hennebry]

On Tue, 8 Mar 2011, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

> On 03/08/2011 05:53 PM, Michael Hennebry wrote:

>> 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?

There is also foo.c, foo.C, bar.s and bar.S .

>> 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.

By "practical",
I was thinking in terms of the amount of work required of the computers.
Whether the result would be useful is a separate issue.

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

Perhaps, but it wouldn't solve the problem under discussion.

-- 
Michael   hennebry at web.cs.ndsu.NoDak.edu
"Pessimist: The glass is half empty.
Optimist:   The glass is half full.
Engineer:   The glass is twice as big as it needs to be."