From: Austin Ziegler <halostatue@...>
Date: 2005-08-30T03:10:50+09:00
Subject: Re: Best way to release mini-libraries?

On 8/29/05, Kirk Haines <khaines@enigo.com> wrote:
> On Monday 29 August 2005 8:41 am, Austin Ziegler wrote:
>> I would do the latter. That's more or less what I've done with both
>> Ruwiki and PDF::Writer as I've added mini-libs there, until those
>> libs grow up enough to demand their own space (which, so far, none of
>> them have ;).
> Okay, now, a related question.
> 
> I'm a bit paranoid about namespace pollution. So, everything that
> goes into IOWA is in an Iowa:: namespace. So, the database connection
> pool is Iowa::DbPool. The web cache class is Iowa::Webcache and the
> LRU class that it uses is Iowa::LRUCache. And so on.

> Does anyone see any problem with keeping these in that Iowa::
> namespace when released as standalone libraries? Keeping, for
> example, the webcache, under Iowa:: makes sure that it won't butt
> heads with someone else's web cache. Just calling it 'class Webcache',
> though, would.
> 
> Or should it be released as nothing more than a class file without any
> installer, leaving it up to the user to make sure it doesn't butt
> heads with something else?  Anyone out there who might use this who
> has an opinion?

That's a bit of a good question, and I'm not the *best* person to ask,
as I have claimed a couple of high-level namespaces ;) The simple answer
is "it depends."

* With MIME::Types, I basically claimed MIME::Type and MIME::Types and
  forced ::MIME to be a module if anyone uses it. (But that's not a
  subproject. However, if I ever *do* get around to doing the libmagic
  stuff, it'll probably be MIME::Magic.)
* With Diff::LCS, I forced Diff to be a module, but chose to be more
  specific.
* I went further with Archive::Tar::Minitar (obviously).
* PDF::Writer is perhaps the biggest claim, and it's not going to get
  much better unless I come up with a cool project name to replace it. I
  will be releasing PDF::Core, PDF::Writer, and PDF::Reader, all. I have
  several utility items (PDF::Charts::*, PDF::SimpleTable, etc.) that
  have sort of claimed space.
* color-tools has claimed the entire Color namespace (which, frankly, I
  don't mind ;), but makes it a bit harder for others to use ::Color as
  anything other than a module, and I "own" Color::RGB and Color::CMYK
  and others as a result of it.

I can't see having done any of these any other way, though, since
although color-tools was originally made to support PDF::Writer, I want
it to be the premier colour conversion and management library in the
Ruby world.

On the other hand, I'm working on a different library (also an offshoot
of PDF::Writer) that I've chosen an entirely different name for (and
even that may change if someone takes the name I've chosen or I find a
better one).

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca