Subject: bug#47028: Discourage single-character package names

From: Mark H Weaver <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2021 19:44:52 -0500

Hi Tobias,

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <[email-masked]> writes:

> Mark H Weaver 写道：
>> Yesterday, an obscure package called "t" was added to Guix.  We
>> should reject such short package names in Guix unless there's a very
>> compelling reason to keep them.
>
> I completely agree (in fact I can't compel myself to find 
> excusable exceptions), but this wasn't explicitly documented 
> anywhere I looked.

We have one notable exception in Guix: "r", which is "grandfathered in"
so-to-speak, but perhaps it would have been excusable anyway, given its
prominence and its large number of related packages "r-*".

I fully support your proposal to talk about single-character names in
the manual, and also to check for them in the linter, but perhaps "r"
should be whitelisted.

    Thank you!
       Mark