[Mageia-dev] Changing default media names

[nicolas vigier]

On Sun, 20 Nov 2011, Samuel Verschelde wrote:

> 
> I'm not sure about it. I see the benefits, but to me there is a major drawback: 
> they are not user-friendly :
> - current names are readable, new ones aren't, they're just technical

Adding capitals and replacing / with spaces does not make the name more
user-friendly. If we want to be friendly with users, we should not
confuse them by calling the same thing with different names all the time.
The naming scheme for medias that is used almost everywhere including
on mirrors is i586/core/release, not Core 32bit Release.

> - current naming scheme doesn't bother you with arch information, except on 64 
> bits system and only for 32 bits media

That's the problem. Sometimes the arch is included, sometimes it is not.
And sometimes two names can refer to different things (Core Release is
not the same thing on x86_64 and i586 installs), or two different names
can refer to the same thing (Core Release on i586 is the same as Core
32bit Release on x86_64 installs).

And 32bit is not more user-friendly than i586. Sources is not more
user-friendly than SRPMS. We should call the same thing with the same
name all the time.

> - the order of items in current scheme is better : first you see whether it's 
> Core, Nonfree or Tainted, then if it's Release/Updates/Backports/Updates 
> Testing/Backports Testing, and then debug media have some more information. 

The order of items in current scheme is totally random :
 Core Release
 Core 32bit Release
 Core Release Sources
 Core Release Debug
 
Sometimes the arch is not included, sometimes the arch is included as
2nd word (32bit), sometimes the arch is the last word (Sources). Debug
is last, while on mirrors it is not.

If we want to be user-friendly, we should use the same names all the
time, so use the same order all the time.

> Release and arch are important but many media share the same release and arch 
> on a given system, so the information should be more discreet.

Release and arch in the name is needed to avoid having different medias
with the same name.

> 
> This proposal looks good for CLI but not for GUI. I share the objectives, but 
> am not entirely convinced by the current proposal, unless it comes with 
> improvements on the UI side.
> 
> Some ideas :
> - change the naming scheme but translate it into human readable names in UI

I think we should not confuse people by displaying a different name for
the same thing. We can add a description text explaining what the media
is, but this should not be the name.

> - Implement item 40 for mageia 2 specs : "really use media tags in the package 
> managers, CLI and GUI: testing, backport, update, etc. Currently, apart from a 

Using media tags does not replace using consistent media names.