vn-cclan package naming conventions and repository organization

The current vn-cclan repository seems to be in some disarray and
somewhat moribund so I thought I'd toss out a few suggestions for
cleaning it up.  I'd be happy to do the work to implement any of these
if people approve.

1. pick and enforce one naming convention
Right now we have cl-$name, org.whatever.me-$name, and just $name.  I
dislike the cl-$name form because it's redundant.  If all the packages
are common lisp, the prefix serves no purpose.  I also dislike the
domain-name scheme even though it does prevent name conflicts.  It seems
over-verbose.  It also has the huge real drawback that changes in the
domain of the hosting group can force changes in code. (This just
happened when a Java project moved from sourceforge to apache jakarta).

I propose a simple multi-part naming scheme of the form
category-name[-optional]*.  For instance:

net-sockets
string-ppcre
time-date
mail-smtp-server

2. reflect the naming convention in the filesystem
Perhaps category/package-name/files?  For instance:
net/sockets/net-sockets-1.0.tar.gz
time/date/time-date-3.2.tar.gz
mail/smtp-server/mail-smtp-server-3.2.tar.gz

The current package tarball layout seems pretty reasonable to me, with
an asd file and associated readmes.

I'm a little hazy on the purpose of the .meta files.  Could someone
refresh my memory.  Are they anything more than manifests?  Are more
uses of them planned?

miles



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