Package name separators

Miles Bader miles at gnu.org
Wed Jul 26 05:43:26 PDT 2000


> RPM has used hyphens since its inception.  Except for a small number of
> releases, RPM has disallowed hyphens in version and release
> specifications.  At least since version 2.0.x, RPM has allowed hyphens
> in package names.
>
> Programs that deal with package specifications (name-version-release)
> directly pretty much do what the following awk scriptlet describes: [omitted]

Right, but unfortunately it's common for *both* the package name and the
version to contain hyphens -- that's why it's annoying.  One can simply
disallow hyphens in versions, but they seem to turn up in the source
versions from which packages are made.

It's true that for most purposes, one shouldn't really get any
information from the package file name, but it's nice to have the
separation be obvious.

-Miles




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