Re: Why ban underscores?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Tobias,

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me@tobias.gr> skribis:

> I was surprised by this commit:
>
> commit 426ade6c8bdab243da719e369a887284368179bb (upstream/master)
> Author: Xinglu Chen <public@yoctocell.xyz>
>
>     import: go: Replace underscores with hyphens in package names.
>
>     As per section '16.4.2 Package Naming' in the manual, use 
>     hypens
>     [sic] instead of underscores in package names.
>
>     * guix/import/go.scm (go-module->guix-package-name): Replace
>     underscores with hyphens.
>
>     Signed-off-by: Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>
>
>
> Indeed, underscores were explicitly banned in 2014 (commit 
> 25083588).  Why?

It’s a convention.  As Mark wrote, it’s mostly for the sake of
consistency.

> Where's the advantage in renaming the following packages from 
> their canonical names?

These package names didn’t follow the convention, so the change would
bring them back in line.  The “advantage” is just consistent naming and
following the rule of least surprise.

Now, renames should only be performed with proper ‘deprecated-package’
definitions in place so users aren’t caught by surprise.

I hope that makes sense!

Ludo’.