25.5. Package Naming Conventions

Packages supplied by distributions and applications should adhere to the following conventions for the name field within the package. The rules are optional for the filename of the package file itself.

The following conventions apply to the name portion of the field alone, not including any release or version portion.

• If the name begins with lsb- and contains no other hyphens, the name should be a package name registered with the Linux Assigned Names and Numbers Authority (LANANA), which shall maintain a registry of LSB names. The name may be registered by either an implementation or an application.

• If the name begins with lsb- and contains more than one hyphen the portion of the name between the first and second hyphens should be either an LSB provider name registered with the LANANA (for example lsb-gnome-gnumeric if gnome is registered), or a domain name registered to the provider in the DNS system. (for example lsb-distro.example.com-database). The LSB provider name registered with the LANANA shall only consist of the ASCII characters [a-z0-9]. The domain name, in accordance with DNS rules, shall be lower case only. The provider name or domain name may be either that of a distribution or an application.

• Package names containing no hyphens are reserved for use by distributions. Applications shall not use such names.

• Package names which do not start with lsb- and which contain a hyphen are open to both distributions and applications. Distributions may name packages in any part of this namespace. They are encouraged to use names from one of the other namespaces available to them, but this is not mandatory due to the large amount of current practice to the contrary.

  Note: Widespread existing practice includes such names as ssh-common, ssh-client, kernel-pcmcia, and the like. Possible alternative names include sshcommon, foolinux-ssh-common (where foolinux is registered to the distribution), or lsb-foolinux-ssh-common.

  Applications may name their packages this way, but only if the portion of the name before the first hyphen is a provider name or registered domain name as described above.

  Note: If an application vendor has domain name such as visicalc.example.com and has registered visicalc as a provider name, they could name packages either in the visicalc-base style or the visicalc.example.com-charting style.

  Package names in this namespace are available to both the distribution and an application. Distributions and applications need to consider the potential for conflicts when deciding to use these names rather than the alternatives (such as names starting with lsb-).