dashes in cabal package names

[Martin Sjögren]

On Fri, 6 Aug 2004 13:15:57 +0100, Simon Marlow <simonmar at microsoft.com> wrote:
> On 06 August 2004 12:53, Martin Sjögren wrote:
> 
> >> Dashes in package names?  Absolutely.  I don't think you need a
> >> non-dash separator between the package name and the version number,
> >> just take the last dash in the package id as the name-version
> >> separator.
> >>
> >> (I really like the <pkgname>-<version> format, probably because it's
> >> so widespread these days).
> >
> > We-ell, there's the issue of the version tags, which use dashes as
> > separator. But if we disallow tags in the package-id, it shouldn't be
> > a problem. foo-bar-0.1.2-bar-foo is harder to understand, though. :)
> 
> Grrr.  Forgot about the tags.  I suggest tags use an underscore separator rather than a dash.

:)
Or a plus as I think Ian suggested at some point: foo-bar-0.1.2+bar+foo.

There is, however, another good reason for not using a dash to
separate name and version. Package names can contain digits. I'm not
sure if they can or should contain dots, but given "foo-3", you don't
know whether it refers to "package foo, version 3" or "package foo-3
without version"... Maybe it's not problematic enough to worry about,
though.


/Martin