What's the preferred linux package name for OSM Express?

[das-g]

Cool project! I'm considering to package OSM Express for NixOS / nixpkgs.

Package names in nixpkgs:

• must be lowercase
• cannot contain spaces
• may be hyphenated

(See section Package naming in the Nixpkgs manual.)

Given these constraints, what should the package name be?

• osmexpress?
• osm-express?
• osmx, like your PyPI package for the python lib?

[bdon]

Hmm, my inclination is that osmexpress feels less arcane than just osmx. If we use that, maybe we should change the command line tool name and python package as well?

[das-g]

Hmm, my inclination is that osmexpress feels less arcane than just osmx.

The long forms are more explicit about what the name means, yeah. As you didn't mention the variant with a hyphen, do you prefer osmexpress over osm-express? "osm" already being an abbreviation, I find the latter easier to decipher.

If we use that, maybe we should change the command line tool name and python package as well?

While it's quite common to have command names and package names match (especially with packages that provide exactly one command), command names that deviate from the package name aren't unheard of. Take mercurial, whose main command is hg, or subversion, whose main command is svn. Because a command is usually typed much more often than a package name, brevity can be a valid concern.

I don't know how established the osmx Python package already is. If it's in wide use already, you might wish to keep its name.

[bdon]

python import statements can't have -, so avoiding _ or - seems more flexible in general. I don't believe there are many users of the python package right now, so that shouldn't factor into changing the name.

[brawer]

Curious, has this been resolved?

[bdon]

I don't believe so, no results on https://search.nixos.org/packages and I haven't ever packaged this project into a package manager.

I would still prefer osmexpress to disambiguate from the similarly named and popular OSMnx (https://osmnx.readthedocs.io) project.

[das-g]

Sorry, I kinda forgot about this. I don't know whether I'll have time to attempt it any time soon, so if someone else feels like packaging it for NixPkgs, feel free to go forward.