Solve the naming mess between the alarm-clock and alarmclock projects

[Ronan Jouchet]

Ubuntu has two applications called "Alarm Clock":
App. A: LP:alarmclock, pkgname: alarm-clock, maintained by Tomasz Sałaciński, http://www.alarm-clock.pl
App. B: LP:alarm-clock, pkgname: alarm-clock-applet, maintained by Johannes H. Jensen, http://alarm-clock.pseudoberries.com

Three things:
 1. Lack of differentiation to this point is confusing for all users, and a pain for all users. Which should I install? Are they even different? I remember using one, but which one was it?
 2. Using ubuntu-bug is the official preferred canonical-endorsed method of reporting bugs because it brings more debug information. However, in this case, the mess between LaunchpadName and PackageName will cause bug reporting to the bad project. Say you want to report a bug about B, okay ?
   - Launching ubuntu-bug alarm-clock will cause a bug to be reported on Ubuntu about package alarm-clock (App. A).
   - Launching ubuntu-bug alarm-clock-applet will say "The problem cannot be reported: This is not a genuine Ubuntu package"
   Example of such a messy bugreport, by me: LP#558543
 3. Finally, alarm-clock-applet is no longer an applet

Naming is emotional, and I guess each of you has his reasons to believe he was there in the first place but please, there must be a solution. Shutter and Pidgin (formerly GScrot and GAIM) did it very successfully (although for different reasons), you should be able to do it too.

[Ronan Jouchet (ronj)]

I posted the same bug in alarm-clock: https://bugs.launchpad.net/alarm-clock/+bug/558575

[sabby7890 (tsalacinski)]

What do you suggest? If you want me to change my application's name - that's ok. But I need a domain to host the website (I paid for alarm-clock.pl and I don't want it to be unused). I can do that - I just host my bugzilla on Launchpad, I am not related to Ubuntu project by any means, so I cannot simply change package name or fix ubuntu-bug.

I can change the name to Camilla Clock for example, but AFAIK this will take time for new package to be added to Ubuntu.

[Ronan Jouchet (ronj)]

Great to see your responsiveness, Tomasz. If I come back on the three issues I mentioned,

1. The best would probably be that both projects choose a name. Anyway, "Alarm clock" is more an application category than an application name. Like "web browser" has Epiphany, Firefox, Chrome, the "Alarm clock" category would have Camilla and XYZ. Plus, if you respect the GNOME menu naming scheme (AppName AppCategory, like Firefox Web browser) it will still be clear what your application does: "Camilla Alarm clock". Good to see you're ready for this, let's see what Johannes says.
2. For ubuntu-bug to work correctly, (correct me if I'm wrong) the LP project must match the package name. At the moment, alarm-clock is your project name but Johannes package name.
   - First, if both of you decide to change names, with the help of transitional packages, the problem will be solved naturally. Both packages could be transformed to stubs depending on the new packages (camilla and xyz) for transitioning
   - If Johannes doesn't want to change his app name and you are the only one to accept the change, that would be a complicated situation where, even giving the keys of the alarm-clock package to Johannes,
     a. users of alarm-clock-applet will start receiving alarm-clock
     b. users of alarm-clock certainly should receive camilla and should uninstall alarm-clock
    I don't know deb packaging enough to know if this is feasible. Do you think so?
3. This adds to the fact that Johannes app should get a new package name along with the new name

I hope I'm starting a discussion between both you and that we'll see solutions emerge. Hopefully this post was more proactive than my first post who was a bit trollish, I admit. Thanks for your time.

[sabby7890 (tsalacinski)]

There were some users complaining about the name, I understand that. I just wanted to have users searching for "alarm clock" finding what they're looking for. I'm a programmer, this is the best name I came up with:) As soon as I find some time to make a new version, I'll change the name to Camilla Clock. But unfortunately, I cannot guarantee that the package will be renamed/added by Ubuntu package maintainers. I have emailed mr. Johannes and informed him about this.

[Ronan Jouchet (ronj)]

I just wanted to have users searching for "alarm clock" finding what they're looking for
>>Totally understandable
Camilla Alarm clock might be better than just Camilla Clock, don't you think? There's nothing wrong with compounded names, see in your menu: Firefox Web Browser, Pidgin Instant Messenger, Gwibber Social Client...

Also, if packaging changes happen, the best would be to help them happen in Debian, so that Debian, Ubuntu and all the derivatives benefit from the updated and transitional packages.

Good you emailed Johannes, I've also commented the bug in his project, telling him about your comments here.

Finally, there is a last possibility I didn't dare to mention before: what if you merged your projects?
- Your project has always been a program, not an applet, and switched to C in 1.x
- Johannes project has always been in C, and switched from applet to program in 0.3.0
That's just an idea I'm throwing because you share lots of things, don't shotgun me if that's a lame idea :P

[Johannes H. Jensen (joh)]

I completely agree - the naming is a mess :-P

> 2. For ubuntu-bug to work correctly, (correct me if I'm wrong) the LP project must match the package name. At the moment, alarm-clock is your project name but Johannes package name.

This is not correct. My package name is 'alarm-clock-applet' and has always been the official ubuntu/debian package name. The only place where my package name has been 'alarm-clock' is in the older packages in my PPA, but they were changed to 'alarm-clock-applet' quite some time ago.

Bug reports from apport (ubuntu-bug) are always reported against the packages in the Ubuntu project and the maintainers of those packages have to determine whether to send them to the respective upstream projects. They are never reported directly against the upstream project, and shouldn't be! So as for ubuntu-bug I don't think there should be any problems with the package names, although I understand it can be confusing for the user.

> 3. Finally, alarm-clock-applet is no longer an applet

The distinction between an 'applet' and a program living in the notification area is fuzzy. For example, the Network Manager status icon binary is called 'nm-applet'. The volume control status icon app is called 'gnome-volume-control-applet'. I really don't think a package rename is necessary just because alarm-clock-applet *technically* isn't an applet.

However, I'm willing to change my launchpad project name to something like 'alarm-clock-applet' if it doesn't involve too much work switching over... I'm not sure it's even possible in Launchpad?

[Ronan Jouchet (ronj)]

2. Thanks for the clarification about this.
  To be continued in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/alarm-clock/+bug/558543 , but I still have problems with Apport on your package.

3. Changing project name cannot be done by LP users (even project owners), but after some googling "launchpad change project name", it seeme it has been done successfully by LP admins in some cases, like https://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad-registry/+question/106113

[Johannes H. Jensen (joh)]

Will rename in 0.4 :-)