Standard package names (was: Re: Packaging and installation)

[Dan Kegel]

Lenz Grimmer wrote:
> > But one point that should be addressed is the use of RPM itself.
> > Different distributions make very different use of RPM and often it's
> > not compatible to each other. What ever happened to LANANA as name
> > authority. Standards for package names, standards for spec files (i.e.
> > how to handle architecture dependent stuff, how to deal with i18n...)
> > could help a lot. The current LSB version needs to be more elaborate
> > on those issues.
> 
> Yes! This is something I was waiting for a long time ago. I always had the
> feeling, that LSB is not addressing the most pressing problems first. Most
> users today complain about wrong or missing dependencies and different
> names for the same package on different distributions. SuSE has finally
> come around with using longer names for their packages (no more 8 char
> cryptic names) and we would be more than happy to change the package names
> to the most common denominator. Is there such a thing as a common package
> namespace?

I don't see a common package namespace listed at http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/
but it's such a good idea it must have been discussed before.
Presumably, packages that are part of all minimal conforming distributions
should be named the same.  LSB should specify those package names.
The initial set of names should be as close to current practice as possible.

This sounds like a small, reasonable task.  Is it?  If progress can be
made on this, people might start feeling better about the state of the LSB.

- Dan