Re: AC_INIT translates PACKAGE to lower case

[Ralf Corsepius <corsepiu at faw dot uni-ulm dot de>]

Am Don, 2002-01-31 um 17.27 schrieb Russ Allbery:
> Akim Demaille <akim@epita.fr> writes:
> 
> > Automake names PACKAGE what Autoconf name PACKAGE_TARNAME.  In addition,
> > Autoconf support PACKAGE_NAME.  Because in many cases PACKAGE_TARNAME
> > can be computed from the PACKAGE_NAME, such a _default_ is provided.  If
> > you don't like it, define your value for the TARNAME.
> 
> > But again, I repeat, nothing can have changed here, since it was not
> > existing before.  Read again: Autoconf has two where Automake has one,
> > and you don't seem to see that you confuse the two Autoconf's.
> 
> Okay, ignore all of that.

> Why are you lowercasing the package name? 

> If it wasn't an arbitrary decision, then presumably there's a good reason
> why the package name needs to be lowercased.  What breaks if it's not?

At present time, probably very little:

* All existing automake-based packages will not be affected, because
automake <= 1.5 requires the old AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE syntax, which
prevented this issue to show, even if using autoconf >= 2.50.

* All packages that apply the old autoconf <= 2.50 syntax will also not
be affected, because PACKAGE and PACKAGE_TARNAME will not be available
then.

There remain all packages which apply autoconf and do not use automake,
furthermore exploit autoconf's >= 2.50 AC_INIT(,,) and apply PACKAGE
and/or PACKAGE_TAR_NAME.
FWIW, until now, I haven't seen any such package, yet.


On the opposite side, all automake+autoconf based packages applying
mixed case package names have the potential to be be affected. Those
which additionally apply gettext would almost for sure be affected.

A rough estimate from grep-ing the package names of the >2000 packages
of the Linux distribution I am using shows < 200 to be using mixed case
package names (w/ ~140 perl-packages among them). Not all of them will
be using autotools, so not many will remain here.

Anyway, there still remains your first question above.

Ralf