D. J. Bernstein
UNIX
The /package hierarchy
Choosing a package name
Names under /package are globally allocated.
For example,
/package/admin/daemontools-0.76
is reserved for use by version 0.76
of my admin/daemontools package.
Other packages can confidently access files through
/package/admin/daemontools,
a symbolic link to the current version of the package.
If you have a new package,
please take some time to figure out a good name for it.
Use Google to see whether the name will cause any confusion.
You must register your name before you use it!
Send mail to the package
mailing list
describing your package and giving its URL;
then wait for me to add the package name to my
list of names.
If I don't like your name for some reason,
I'll suggest an acceptable replacement name.
Package names such as admin/daemontools may contain
lowercase ASCII letters,
digits,
- (when the next character is not a digit),
+,
and /.
Version numbers such as 0.76
may contain lowercase ASCII letters,
digits,
.,
-,
and
+.
Version numbers must start with a digit.
Every current package name begins with one of the following strings:
- admin/ for system administration.
- data/ for databases, data structures, etc.
- mail/ for Internet mail, instant messaging, etc.
- map/ for street maps, weather maps, star maps, etc.
- math/ for mathematics.
- misc/ for miscellany.
- prog/ for general programming.
- net/ for network communication.
- text/ for text editors, text processors, etc.
- web/ for network publication: browsers, HTTP servers, FTP servers, etc.
More strings, perhaps with more than one slash, will be defined in the future.
Why classify packages at all?
Why admin/daemontools instead of simply daemontools?
The answer is simply that
many people complain when a single directory gets too big.
Delegations
Package names beginning host/h
are allocated by the owner of Internet host h.
For example, the owner of sun.com
controls /package/host/sun.com.