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.

{| style="font-size: 80%;" style="background-color: #002867; width: 4em;"
 * style="background-color: #859BBE;" | || Discouraged
 * style="background-color: #FFFFFF;" | || Allowed
 * style="background-color: #FFFFFF;" | || Allowed
 * style="background-color: #FFFFFF;" | || Allowed