[Feature Request] Case insensitivity

[spookytea]

The xbps-install command should ignore the case of the package name for enhanced ease of use

[akhiljalagam]

The xbps-install command should ignore the case of the package name for enhanced ease of use

+1

yes. it's confusing a bit.
who knows which packages starts with Uppercase letter.
for example sudo xbps-install ModemManager works
sudo xbps-install modemmanager doesn't work

What could be the reason for case-sensitivity in package names?

[Duncaen]

What could be the reason for case-insensitivity in package names?

Everything is case sensitive, I don't really think xbps-install and thereby dependencies should be case insensitive just because its more convenient.

If something should change then its void-packages to either use to use lower case names consistently (or upper case lol).

[akhiljalagam]

I don't think there exists two packages in void-packages with case-sensitive names. For example, NetworkManager and networkmanager, both should be the same. It's not about convenience, but most of the users are not aware of this, IMO.

Currently, there are only 1200 packages in void which are case-sensitive.

Well, At least xbps-query -Rs results are not case-sensitive, thanks for that. 😄

[Jlll1]

I haven't really paid attention, but I think most package managers are case sensitive? If I'm recalling correctly all pms I ever used were case sensitive, so I wouldn't say this is a case of users not being aware of it being so. I agree that the package names should be consistent about it, though. I shouldn't have to double-check and think if a package is named all lowercase, camelcase or whatever else.

[fvalasiad]

@Duncaen What about an option instructing the corresponding xbps functionality to read user input as case-insensitive? Surely a unified standard is the best solution but we can't really control how people name their packages, we can only choose wisely about what we do on our side.

Regarding conflicts, we could do what flatpak does and make the user choose, even though as others mentioned conflicts are non-existent at this point. After all flatpak faces them so often because it matches the search query as a regular expression, not just case-sensitivity.

Unnecessary bloat just for user convenience? Perhaps it is.

[akhiljalagam]

@fvalasiad : we can only choose wisely about what we do on our side. I strongly agree with you.

Some things that leave me scratching my head:

• Case sensitivity
• Cryptic command names
• No protection from user errors (rm -rf)

[darkralts]

i think its a general good idea, i like the idea of adding a flag like xbps -install -Sc c for case insensitive for example

[sascha-wi]

I am a totally new user and I stumbled upon this myself, because xbps-query -Rs gave me a result which couldn't be xbps-install-ed. (e.g. signal-desktop)

[classabbyamp]

xbps-query's -s flag is case insensitive, but the result it gives you is in the correct case:

$ xbps-query -Rs signal-desktop
[-] Signal-Desktop-6.26.0_1     Signal Private Messenger for Linux
[-] Signal-Desktop-dbg-6.26.0_1 Signal Private Messenger for Linux (debug files)

[sascha-wi]

Instead of just changing query into install and -Rs into -S I know also need to change S and D... Just putting it out there. Not sure how people normally work with xbps.