Thoughts on changing our package names

[Sebastian Hahn]

On Nov 13, 2009, at 1:50 PM, Andrew Lewman wrote:

> I've been meeting more and more tor users over the past few months who
> are confused by our package naming.  They want to download a "tor
> bundle" but instead get a "vidalia bundle".  They don't understand  
> what
> the difference between vidalia, tor, polipo, and the other stuff in  
> our
> bundles.  It's all Tor to them.

I have the same experience. Heck, when I was a novice Tor user I  
needed to go back to my browser and look at the filename that was  
downloaded to figure out where in my Downoads directory that Tor thing  
was.
> I'd like to simply get rid of the installation bundles in favor of Tor
> Browser Bundles for Windows, OS X, and Linuxes.  However, that fantasy
> world is a ways off.  We need help fine tuning the browser bundles for
> OS X and Linux.

I'm not sure this path is that great an idea. We currently have quite  
a few windows users run relays, and my intuition is that most of them  
are running the installation bundle, so Tor starts automatically when  
they boot their computer. Losing this option seems bad.

> My next best thought is to simply name the installation bundles as  
> such:
>
> Tor-Installation-Bundle-for-(Windows|OS X)-(bundle version number).
>
> The bundle versions can start off at 1.0 and work their way up with  
> each
> new release.  There would be package change logs to explain what's
> different in each new installation bundle version.  Users will be able
> to simply tell if they have the latest or not by comparing the bundle
> version number.

I think this scheme is a good idea. We could still have some  
flexibility, and call our current bundle 1.0 for a start, and then  
move our way up to 1.1, etc; and when we feel an important enough  
feature gets implemented, we increment. But worrying about this  
version scheme seems to be not really necessary, as the versions only  
need to be monotonically increasing to not confuse the user.

> Only -stable versions of Tor get a bundle version number as described
> above.  -alpha packages are still built the with the version numbers  
> of
> tor and vidalia as a distinction.  Alternatively, we could switch to
> some nomenclature such as odd numbered major versions as -alpha, even
> numbered major releases as -stable.  However, given how fast we switch
> from -alpha to -stable, we'll be at Tor Installation Bundle for  
> Windows
> 14.1 soon enough.

Why not keep our current way of naming stuff for alphas (calling the  
bundle Vidalia bundle, etc; and making it a little harder to find on  
the website so less unsuspecting users stumble across it the first  
time they try out Tor)? It seems that our testers should be able to  
cope.

> Thoughts?

What does Matt think about rebranding Vidalia?


Sebastian