Overview: ~~~~~~~~ We have begun work on X.Org X11 modularization, and are in the process of packaging the video and input drivers. Upstream, each driver has its own individual tarball, which are available at: http://xorg.freedesktop.org/X11R7.0-RC0/driver One of the benefits of the modularized X.Org X11R7, is that it makes it much easier for us to provide individual driver updates without having to release the entire 150Mb monolithic X release. The ability for us to update a single driver, and release that single driver to users is an important thing for a modern OS, in particular for desktop systems. As such, we have decided to package each driver individually in its own src.rpm package. It has now come to the time where we must make a decision as to how the driver src.rpm packages will be named, so we can begin packaging them, and also let the installer team and other groups know what they're called. As such we are soliciting feedback from the Fedora community, including Red Hat developers and subsystem maintainers. Proposal: ~~~~~~~~ Here is my initial proposal for naming the src.rpms, along with brief rationale, and the real (or perceived) advantages and disadvantages: xorg-x11-driver-<type>-<name> The prefix of "xorg-x11" identifies the driver package as being an official part of the upstream X.Org project. This distinguishes the driver from one that might be provided by the "dri" project, the "gatos" project, or any other project. It makes it easier to substitute alternative driver packages that provide a driver of the same name. It also makes it clear to the user, the developer, and anyone else looking at the package, that the source code contained inside came from X.Org directly. It also makes it clearer where bug reports should be filed upstream. As such, I propose all driver packages start with the "xorg-x11-" prefix. The "driver" portion of the proposed name, indicates that it is a driver for the X server, much like "module" in kernel-module packages. It namespaces all drivers, so that they all appear together in directory listings, and are easy to group together from scripts using globs, etc. ie: # Install all of the xorg drivers: rpm -ivh xorg-x11-driver-*.rpm The "<type>" attribute is either "video" or "input", as used in the upstream tarball names, and further namespaces things, so that all input drivers appear together, and all video drivers appear together. This makes it easy to handle all input drivers or all video drivers from a script as well. Finally, the driver <name> field, is the official name of the driver from the upstream tarballs, which generally is the name of the driver binary that gets installed as well. Using this naming mechanism, I believe gives us the most flexibility with driver packages, and makes life a lot easier down the line as far as maintenance goes. It also makes the packages very obvious as to what their contents are. The only slight disadvantage to this naming scheme that comes to mind which someone might point out, is that the package names are semi-lengthy. I don't see this as a problem however, as all modern shells have filename completion, and it works quite well. The benefits of clarity of contents, directory listing grouping, CVS repository grouping, bugzilla grouping, etc., IMHO far outweigh any perceived disadvantages of lenthy names. Request for comments: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Interested Fedora Core, Fedora Extras, or community developers who have an opinion about the X.Org modular package naming conventions, or who just want to provide feedback concerning the above proposal, are encouraged to respond to this RFC on or before Monday August 29th if possible. We look forward to hearing everyone's feedback, and incorporating the collective concious of the community into our decision making efforts. Thanks for your considerations. -- Mike A. Harris Red Hat Canada, Ltd. X Devel Team