Thoughts on changing our package names

[coderman]

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 4:50 AM, Andrew Lewman <andrew at torproject.org> 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.
>
> The version numbers also confuse them.  They aren't sure what all the
> numbers mean, nor why they should care.  From the perspective of a new
> user, they don't care about the different components of a package and
> what version each component is; they just need to know if they have the
> latest or not.

Agreed. Regardless of individual component versions I would also like
to see a single consistent version number associated with a singular
"Tor Bundle" installer.
The fact that this bundle is comprised of a number of different parts
like Polipo, Vidalia, etc. should be internal to the package and not
confusing the user.


> My next best thought is to simply name the installation bundles as such:
>
> Tor-Installation-Bundle-for-(Windows|OS X)-(bundle version number).

I would omit the -Installation- and -for- part for brevity and replace
Windows with Win32 as one day we may care about 64bit native builds.
That is, Tor-Bundle-Win32-1.0
Is the Installation part to distinguish from the no-install portable
Tor browser bundle? That is the extent of my bike shed commentary :)


> 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.
>
> Thoughts?

Sounds good!