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#551 Request for change to tcl tarball naming convention

open
Daniel A. Steffen
53. Configure and Build Tools (24)
5
2009-05-01
2009-05-01
Petrus
No

I was wondering if the name of the tcl source tarball could please be changed from tcl(version)-src.tar.gz to the more normal convention of tcl-(version)-src.tar.gz, with the extra hyphen between name and version number. I've written something to handle automated unpacking/compiling of a number of packages, and at the moment, due to this difference in naming, tcl is the only package which I have had to write an edge case for. This would, therefore, be enormously appreciated. :)

Discussion

  • Don Porter

    Don Porter - 2009-05-07

    From the chat:

    kbk Uhm. I think for what he's requesting to work, the directory it unpacks into also has to be renamed tcl8.6->tcl-8.6
    kbk And that has to be approached with fear and trembling because there are hidden dependencies there (e.g., the stuff in the tools/ directory that does man page conversion)
    dgp that's another assumption of some conventional scripts?
    kbk It's a very good idea, but the Devil will be in the details

    Can petrus4 please comment on whether just renaming
    the tarball is enough, or whether the automation scripts
    need a different root directory name as well?

     

  • Petrus

    Petrus - 2009-05-07

    I *could* work around the directory if the tarball only was changed, but both the directory and the tarball would definitely be ideal.

    I apologise if this puts you guys out too much, but it would really help me out, and as kbk says, I suspect it would probably help out a lot of other downstream distros as well, since I'm assuming most of them have automated processes for dealing with this sort of thing as well, and they would need to edge case around non-standard naming too.

     

  • Daniel A. Steffen

    Daniel A. Steffen - 2009-05-07

    FWIW I think this is a terrible idea, I know that I have more than one existing tool that rely on the current naming convention to download the tarball from sourceforge, that would be broken by this change, and I'm sure there are other tools out there that rely on our currentnaming convention (e.g. macports immediately comes to mind, I'm sure other ports collections too).

    It seems completely backward to break all those people to avoid an edge case in one person's (already working) tool...

    IMO should be closed as rejected