PCRE package naming

[Matthew Vernon]

Hi,

PCRE has been in Debian for some time; the current packages correspond
to upstream 8.35 (with a pile of backported security fixes, which I hope
will end up as an 8.38 release some time soon). These packages are
called pcre3 (and libpcre3 ships libpcre.so.3).

Upstream has a new PCRE library, which they hope everyone will
eventually migrate to, which is called PCRE2. It is currently version
10.20. It ships things named like libpcre2-8.so.0, and its pcregrep is
called pcre2grep.

The natural thing to call the PCRE2 packages is pcre2, but that's going
to lead to confusion - ISTM that something that makes it clear that
PCRE2 is newer than PCRE is desirable. And, obviously, PCRE & PCRE2 need
to be co-installable.

Smart ideas?

Regards,

Matthew

[Simon Richter]

Hi Matthew,

Post by Matthew Vernon
Upstream has a new PCRE library, which they hope everyone will
eventually migrate to, which is called PCRE2. It is currently version
10.20. It ships things named like libpcre2-8.so.0, and its pcregrep is
called pcre2grep.

That should probably translate to "libpcre2-8-0" and "libpcre2-dev",
although it is suboptimal that the existing -dev package is called
"libpcre3-dev", probably for historical reasons.

Post by Matthew Vernon
The natural thing to call the PCRE2 packages is pcre2, but that's going
to lead to confusion - ISTM that something that makes it clear that
PCRE2 is newer than PCRE is desirable. And, obviously, PCRE & PCRE2 need
to be co-installable.

The shared libraries will be co-installable without problems, obviously.
For the -dev packages, I wonder whether pcre2 can be used as a drop-in
(which would lead almost certainly mean that the -dev packages would
conflict)

If -dev packages conflict, that is not a huge issue, as long as only one
of them has a higher priority than "extra". This has been used for
library transitions quite often, and the old library package still needs
to exist during the transition anyway.

Simon

[Matthew Vernon]

Hi,

Post by Simon Richter
Hi Matthew,

Post by Matthew Vernon
Upstream has a new PCRE library, which they hope everyone will
eventually migrate to, which is called PCRE2. It is currently version
10.20. It ships things named like libpcre2-8.so.0, and its pcregrep is
called pcre2grep.

That should probably translate to "libpcre2-8-0" and "libpcre2-dev",
although it is suboptimal that the existing -dev package is called
"libpcre3-dev", probably for historical reasons.

Post by Matthew Vernon
The natural thing to call the PCRE2 packages is pcre2, but that's going
to lead to confusion - ISTM that something that makes it clear that
PCRE2 is newer than PCRE is desirable. And, obviously, PCRE & PCRE2 need
to be co-installable.

The shared libraries will be co-installable without problems, obviously.
For the -dev packages, I wonder whether pcre2 can be used as a drop-in
(which would lead almost certainly mean that the -dev packages would
conflict)

No, the -dev packages will need to be co-installable, too. I expect
we'll need to ship PCRE (including its -dev package) for quite some time.

...so I'm still not sure what to call PCRE2 :-/

Regards,

Matthew

[Russ Allbery]

Post by Matthew Vernon
No, the -dev packages will need to be co-installable, too. I expect
we'll need to ship PCRE (including its -dev package) for quite some time.
...so I'm still not sure what to call PCRE2 :-/

It's pretty ugly, but I'd tend to use libpcre-v2-dev. Hopefully people
will be able to find it.

[Jonathan Dowland]

Post by Matthew Vernon
No, the -dev packages will need to be co-installable, too. I expect
we'll need to ship PCRE (including its -dev package) for quite some time.
...so I'm still not sure what to call PCRE2 :-/

Sorry if I'm being thick, but libpcre2-dev doesn't clash with libpcre3-dev,
and the descriptions (short and long) can clarify what they actually are.

Is there anything preventing a rename of libpcre2-dev to libpcre-dev, first?

[Jonathan Dowland]

Post by Jonathan Dowland
Is there anything preventing a rename of libpcre2-dev to libpcre-dev, first?

That should, of course, have been

"Is there anything preventing a rename of libpcre3-dev to libpcre-dev, first?"

[Anthony DeRobertis]

Post by Matthew Vernon
The natural thing to call the PCRE2 packages is pcre2, but that's going
to lead to confusion - ISTM that something that makes it clear that
PCRE2 is newer than PCRE is desirable. And, obviously, PCRE & PCRE2 need
to be co-installable.

There are already libpcre16-3 and libpcre32-3 packages. That doesn't
seem to have lead to confusion. Quite possibly because libpcre* is
normally installed by apt automatically as a dependency, so the vast
majority of users don't need to think about the package name.

Seems like the developers who are going to install -dev package could be
helped by something in the short & long description. E.g., something as
simple as putting "Old" and "New" in front of the short description, and
then explaining in the long description.

And the pcregrep package doesn't have a 3 in it currently, so it's not a
problem.