case sensitivity (was: Re: A sad case)

[Roland Illig <roland.illig%gmx.de@localhost>]

Alistair Crooks schrieb:
> what's the driving force for having license names that are
> case-sensitive? I can just see it aggravating users (and myself) for
> no benefit at all. Sorry for repeating myself, but I don't get the
> reasons, which is why I'm having such a hard time understanding it
> all.

The magic word here is "consistency". Almost everything in pkgsrc is
case sensitive.

case sensitive:
* variable names
* make targets
* package options
* POSIX commands
* package names
* command line options for the package tools (compare -v and -V)
* platform names
* compiler names
* all(?) enumerations in make variables (see pkglint's makevars.map
file, search for "{")

case insensitive:
* file names on case-insensitive file systems
* "yes" and "YES" in some make variables

The former list is much larger than the latter, and it is easier to make
programs deal with things from the former list, too.

Roland