Package name separators

[Jim Knoble]

Circa 2000-Jul-26 21:43:26 +0900 dixit Miles Bader:

: Right, but unfortunately it's common for *both* the package name and the
: version to contain hyphens

I honestly can't recall when the last time was that i saw a hyphen
character in the version designation of a software package (i.e., the
source tarball).  Oh wait ... i think jed
(http://mit.space.edu/~davis/jed.html) has hyphens.

I am strongly of the opinion that normalizing version designations is a
good idea, not only for programming purposes (it simplifies things like
version-comparison algorithms) but for user-visible purposes as well.

In fact, in my own little ideal world, software developers themselves
would use version designations consisting only of unsigned integers
separated by dots (periods, full stops).  Sigh.

: -- 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.

That can often be taken care of by polite discussion with authors and
maintainers.

-- 
jim knoble | jmknoble at jmknoble.cx | http://www.jmknoble.cx/