Naming scheme for Qt5/KF5-based libraries outside of KF5

[Boudhayan Gupta]

On 27 September 2015 at 10:29, Alexander Potashev <aspotashev at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2015-09-27 1:39 GMT+03:00 Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org>:
>> El Diumenge, 27 de setembre de 2015, a les 04:01:26, Boudhayan Gupta va
>> escriure:
>>> On 27 September 2015 at 03:36, Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org> wrote:
>>> > El Dissabte, 26 de setembre de 2015, a les 16:27:22, Sune Vuorela va
>> escriure:
>>> >> On 2015-09-26, Alexander Potashev <aspotashev at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >> > 1. Many people prefer a "KF5" prefix, e.g. libKF5Screen.so).
>>> >> > 2. Another way of naming is a -qt5 suffix, e.g. libmarblewidget-qt5.so.
>>> >> > 3. (probably some others?)
>>> >> >
>>> >> > Friedrikh said in [1] that using a KF5 prefix for all libraries will
>>> >> > "blur the hint by the name if something is part of KF5 or not".
>>> >> >
>>> >> > Any thoughts? I believe we can have guidelines for library names.
>>> >>
>>> >> I do think that having things named KF5 that aren't actual frameworks is
>>> >> bad for several reasons.
>>> >>
>>> >> 1) It blurs what's a framework
>>> >> 2) We promise ABI and API compatibility for frameworks, but not for
>>> >> other things
>>> >> 3) Moving something from "not a KDE Framework" to "KDE Framework" gives
>>> >> a last chance for fixing up abi/api.
>>> >>
>>> >> so. foo-qt5 is fine for a qt5 version of foo.
>>> >
>>> > I agree, the problem is that there's few exceptions to copy from, so
>>> > that's
>>> > the exact reason libkdegames has that KF5 thing in the name, the guy that
>>> > did the port just copied what the frmeworks do.
>>> >
>>> > So anyone up for write what "a library that is not frameworks should do to
>>> > be nice in the KDE land"?
>>>
>>> We could kill two birds with one stone here, creating a new KDE module
>>> just for libraries (say, KDE Companion Libraries or something) and put
>>> everything in the KC5 (or whatever we decide) namespace.
>>>
>>> I'm all for just putting everything in KDE Support, using the KS5
>>> namespace and removing the tier0 restriction from Support.
>>
>> I don't see which birds it kills, as far as I see it it only gives you the
>> problem of having yet another product to release.
>
> Sune, Boudhayan, Albert,
>
> Thanks for your feedback! I think we already have consensus on the
> "-qt5" suffix. I'll go rename the shared libraries in a few repos...
> :)
>
> Albert, do you mean you want a Techbase page with guidelines for libraries?
>
> Regarding the library product, Boudhayan almost repeated my proposal
> [1]. But using a namespace (e.g. KC5::) would not be a good idea
> because this product may contain completely disconnected libraries.
> "-qt5" suffixes should be enough. For KF5 the namespace makes sense
> because the frameworks have numerous dependencies between one another,
> thus KF5 feels and is promoted as an all-in-one product.
>
> [1] https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/release-team/2015-June/008628.html

Putting hyphens in library names is just ugly, when the rest of the
product name is neat and tidy CamelCase with an initial uppercase
letter.

I'm still in favour of a new product, or reusing KDESupport, or even
Extragear libs. If you must use a suffix though, please consider using
Qt5, not -qt5, so that the lib becomes libSomeThingQt5, not
libSomeThing-qt5.

-- Boudhayan