[Bro-Dev] package manager progress

[Siwek, Jon]

> On Jul 27, 2016, at 11:15 AM, Johanna Amann <johanna at icir.org> wrote:
> 
> And to add a me three to this - I am also with him on this one. On top 
> of things - I might misremember this, but didn't we plan package names 
> to include the github user name at one point of time? So a package name 
> would be user/redis, for example, and there also could be user2/redis?

Yes, package sources support hierarchical package names, but don’t require it.  The hierarchy for the default package source is currently “github_user_name/package_name”.  I’m the only one w/ a package at the moment, but you can see the structure here:

https://github.com/bro/packages

Right now, a user of bro-pkg can refer to my package as simply “bro-test-package”.  If another user, say “bob”, creates “bob/bro-test-package”, then the client will no longer accept “bro-test-package” for commands where it is ambiguous and tell the user to clarify between either “bob/bro-test-package” or “jsiwek/bro-test-package”.

It’s also not allowed to have two packages with the same shortened name (e.g. “bro-test-package”) installed simultaneously.  Interested to hear if people have use cases for that, but I expect the common case for same-name packages to be forks (either hard forks or just forking to contribute bugfixes) and allowing multiple packages of the same name to be installed may make that case more confusing/complicated for users/developers.

- Jon