Here's something brand-new related to this naming guidelines issue:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:NamingGuidelines#Separators

When naming packages for Fedora, the maintainer must use the dash '-'
as the delimiter for name parts.

[...]

packages where '''the upstream name''' naturally contains an underscore are
excluded from this.

And when deciding on what "upstream name" to use, https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:NamingGuidelines#General_Naming only tells:

When naming a package, the name should match the upstream tarball
'''or''' project name from which this software came.

The "or" in there is the weak point. Obviously, if the package name is constructed from the upstream project name, it may differ from the tarball name, or vice versa. What to do in that case?

Here's what has happened recently in the review queue:

• evas-generic-loaders : https://bugzilla.redhat.com/890717
• evas_generic_loaders : https://bugzilla.redhat.com/998774

The upstream project name, on the contrary, as in the included README and NEWS files is "Evas Generic Loaders", and at Fedora one would either construct a lower-case name from that with '-' separators '''or''' use the tarball name instead.

At today's meeting we discussed this but since we only had five people and two of those were the FPC members in disagreement we didn't put anything up for a vote. During the discussion, though, it seemed that many FPC members were in favour of making stronger recommendations that we tell people to use all lowercase names and use "-" as a separator. This makes me think that perhaps the current guidelines were a compromise where there were those that were in favour of normalizing names and others who were in favour of using upstream names as presented by the tarballs. The present guidelines would be what was needed to get a quorum of votes on that issue.

There weren't enough FPC members there today for me to get a feel for whether a compromise is still needed or if one side has gained ascendancy. I can try to write a draft as a strawman for people to vote on but it'll be low on my Guidelines-to-draft priority list so it might be quicker if someone else wants to write something up.

Another option for speed might be to vote on specific cases where there's conflicts (for instance, the mentioned package rename request; the evs-generic-loaders request appears to have sorted itself out.) let us know if that is desirable.

Please sort this out at some place where you FPC members talk to eachother in a more efficient way. I really don't understand why FPC members don't use packaging list (despite the FPC page which advertises it).

In particular, an official response to https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=997679#c14 will be needed and very much appreciated.

[...]

evas_generic_loaders vs. evas-generic-loaders

Issue remains. Can I do anything to rephrase comment 1 of this ticket?

Also related, "avl vs. avl":
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2013-September/189206.html

At today's FPC meeting we voted on:

"Use lowercase and turn underscores into dashes unless there's a compelling reason to follow a different upstream convention."

(+1:5, 0:0, -1:0)

That should take care of the rename request and the evas-generic-loaders question.

avl vs libavl would seem to be taken care of by the Conflicts Guidelines? Since the retired avl is dead and gone upstream in addition to being retired in Fedora there should really be no problem with reusing the name either.

Written into the guidelines. Announcement text:

"""

The naming guidelines have been changed to emphasize that package names should generally use lowercase and turn underscores into dashes unless there's a compelling reason to follow a different upstream convention.

"""