Archive:PackagingDrafts/ASCIINamingLowercase

Package names should be in all lowercase.

Reasoning

• This keeps people from guessing whether a package is called geoip, GeoIP, Geoip, or GeoIp.
• Many tools only do basic byte-value sorting. Mixed case results in human-hostile sorting.
• Historic free casing resulted in inconsistent choices for the same projects depending on the packager sensitivities. The only simple rule to ensure user-friendly consistency is not to allow special casing.
• Prevents package names which only differ in case.
• This is safer WRT case-insensitive storage and mirror nodes.
• This transform is much kinder than what is asked of non-ASCII project.
• Even historic mixed-case packages like X have been converted to lowercase over time. There is no good reason to allow packagers to repeat the mixed-case mistake now.
• Note: Debian does this already but doesn't have rationale for the restriction.

Change

Specifically, all Fedora packages must be named using only the following characters of the Unicode Basic Latin block , using the UTF-8 encoding.

The packager may add a virtual provides in the package that references the upstream name if they think it will help people find it.

2>0	2>	2>	2>	0	2>	2>	2>	p
0030	0070
2>1	2>	2>	2>	1	2>	2>	a	q
0031	0061	0071
2>2	2>	2>	2>	2	2>	2>	b	r
0032	0062	0072
2>3	2>	2>	2>	3	2>	2>	c	s
0033	0063	0073
2>4	2>	2>	2>	4	2>	2>	d	t
0034	0064	0074
2>5	2>	2>	2>	5	2>	2>	e	u
0035	0065	0075
2>6	2>	2>	2>	6	2>	2>	f	v
0036	0066	0076
2>7	2>	2>	2>	7	2>	2>	g	w
0037	0067	0077
2>8	2>	2>	2>	8	2>	2>	h	x
0038	0068	0078
2>9	2>	2>	2>	9	2>	2>	i	y
0039	0069	0079
2>A	2>	2>	2>	2>	2>	2>	j	z
006A	007A
2>B	2>	2>	+	2>	2>	2>	k	2>
002B	006B
2>C	2>	2>	2>	2>	2>	2>	l	2>
006C
2>D	2>	2>	-	2>	2>	2>	m	2>
002D	006D
2>E	2>	2>	.	2>	2>	2>	n	2>
002E	006E
2>F	2>	2>	2>	2>	2>	_	o	2>
005F	006F

	Discouraged
	Allowed