Re: vn-cclan package naming conventions and repository organization

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


Thanks for stirring up some discussion.

Miles Egan <[email protected]> writes:

> 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. 

Indeed.  What was _supposed_ to happen is that a package of the form $name 
might be converted to cl-$name by an asdf->vendor_package_format
converter tool, so we'd have $name.tar.gz (upstream) and cl-$name.i386.rpm

My _personal_ opinion is that if cclan is not going anywhere right now
it really isn't due to poor package naming conventions - it's because
it's easier for most people to find some web or ftp space of their own
and put the files up there.

I think we need to be primarily in the pointers-to-packages business,
not necessarily in the package hosting game itself.  I'm going to add
a :package keyword to CLiki to do what the :download (formerly >)
keyword should have done had I thought to impose a standard package
format for the download at that time.

:(package "http://www.example.com/my-lisp-package.tar.gz")

The proposed rules for using this will be

(1) only one of these tags per page
(2) must be the location of the cclan/ASDF System package for which
    the page is named.  That is, the page name and package name are
    identical.
(3) This replaces the :download tag, which may not be used on the same page
(4) the URL scheme must be HTTP (makes it easier to write an automatic
    package download tool)
(5) optional but recommended: a detached PGP signature should be
    available alongside my-lisp-package.tar.gz as my-lisp-package.tar.gz.asc

How to write an automatic package downloader : write an http client
which asks for http://www.cliki.net/$1?download , follow the redirect,
untar, build.  For extra points, grab the signature and check that too.
Where you get the pgp fingerprint to verify against is of course your
own problem, but I recommend that local lisp user groups exchange keys
when they meet.

> 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?

The meta files are for archive node maintainers and control which
version of the package is current, and which should be moved into
archive directories or deleted.


- -dan

- -- 

   http://www.cliki.net/ - Link farm for free CL-on-Unix resources 
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8 <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/>

iD8DBQE+ulmJHDK5ZnWQiRMRAmgEAJ0eBtjr3u18HWyyYqFY2OhCe2R8lwCgy0Mv
ZkxXODQV2EBZJoJsRMwWKpg=
=ckyi
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


-------------------------------------------------------
Enterprise Linux Forum Conference & Expo, June 4-6, 2003, Santa Clara
The only event dedicated to issues related to Linux enterprise solutions
www.enterpriselinuxforum.com