Decide on naming of modules

[vweevers]

With abstract-level, there is no "down" or "up" anymore. For example, memdown does not have to be wrapped with levelup. This means level-mem could just do module.exports = require('memdown') to export (largely) the same functionality as before. Which begs the question, should we:

1. Keep memdown (as an abstract-level database); deprecate level-mem (as a levelup db)
2. Deprecate memdown (as an abstract-leveldown database); move code to level-mem (as an abstract-level db)
3. Deprecate both and create a new memory-level package (as well as leveldb-level, indexeddb-level, etc)

@Level/core thoughts?

[vweevers]

Option 3, where *-level naming means a database and level-* means a plugin, could look like:

Old module(s)	New module
abstract-leveldown	abstract-level
memdown / level-mem	memory-level
leveldown	leveldb-level
level-js	indexeddb-level
level	level1
rocksdb / level-rocksdb	rocks-level
level-party	party-level
multileveldown	protobuf-level? peer-level?
subleveldown	?
level-test	can be done differently
encoding-down	n/a
deferred-leveldown	n/a

¹ Would export leveldb-level in Node and indexeddb-level in browsers.

[juliangruber]

1. Keep memdown (as an abstract-level database); deprecate level-mem (as a levelup db)

Not really an option to me, when it doesn't make sense for everything to be called down.

2. Deprecate memdown (as an abstract-leveldown database); move code to level-mem (as an abstract-level db)

I think this is the best for consumers, but I wonder how we would do that. If we moved the code, we'd lose history, if we renamed the repos people might be confused.

3. Deprecate both and create a new memory-level package (as well as leveldb-level, indexeddb-level, etc)

Prefixes are nicer because they sort well 🤔

[vweevers]

I wonder how we would do that. If we moved the code, we'd lose history, if we renamed the repos people might be confused.

The best (but indeed not perfect) way would be to rename level-mem to e.g. level-mem-archived and fork memdown to level-mem (not through github). Because level-mem is a light wrapper with relatively little git(hub) history.

The potential confusion is why I'm leaning towards option 3 atm, because it makes a clean split. Consumers will have to replace their require() or import statements, which is not that bad especially if it results in a consistent set of names (which is a source of confusion today and not just because of "up" vs "down"; I'm looking at you level-js and rocksdb).

Prefixes are nicer because they sort well

It's a crowded namespace so we'd have to use an npm @level scope for that. A nice thing about the current "down" naming is that you can tell if a module is a store or a plugin; *-level naming preserves that (though again, not perfectly).

[ralphtheninja]

It will be confusing either way, so I'm also leaning towards option 3, to make it less confusing. New names also makes it easier to talk about different things.

[vweevers]

To increase the benefit of new names, we could take them a bit further. For example rave-level to replace level-party.

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I considered scopes for a bit but it doesn't help because we'll still lack unique names for repos, code variables and human communication.

[vweevers]

As for subleveldown (though later on I want to merge that into abstract-level too) I think I'll go for prefix-level:

Click to expand

✖ sublevel (​https://www.npmjs.com/package/sublevel​) is unavailable ✖ level-sublevel (​https://www.npmjs.com/package/level-sublevel​) is unavailable ⚠ level-sub (​https://www.npmjs.com/package/level-sub​) is squatted ✖ sub-level (​https://www.npmjs.com/package/sub-level​) is unavailable ✔ sublevel-level is available ✔ namespaced-level is available ✔ namespace-level is available ✔ section-level is available ✔ sectioned-level is available ✔ prefix-level is available ✔ prefixed-level is available ✔ subspace-level is available ⚠ subspace (​https://www.npmjs.com/package/subspace​) is squatted ✔ spacelevel is available ✔ space-level is available

[vweevers]

Here's a complete set of names. Unique enough, available on npm, and able to distinguish between the name of the abstract-level implementation and its underlying store (e.g. LevelDB). I think this works rather well.

Old module(s)	New module	Named export
abstract-leveldown	abstract-level	AbstractLevel
leveldown	classic-level	ClassicLevel
memdown & level-mem	memory-level	MemoryLevel
level-js	browser-level	BrowserLevel
level	level1	Level
rocksdb & level-rocksdb	rocks-level	RocksLevel
multileveldown	many-level	ManyLevel
level-party	rave-level	RaveLevel
subleveldown 2	prefix-level	PrefixLevel

¹ Will export classic-level in Node and browser-level in browsers. ² Later decided to make sublevels builtin to abstract-level.

[vweevers]

To clarify that "Named export" column, I'm also thinking of using classes and named exports everywhere. E.g.:

const { ClassicLevel } = require('classic-level')
const { MemoryLevel } = require('memory-level')

const db = new ClassicLevel('./db', { valueEncoding: 'json' })
const db = new MemoryLevel({ valueEncoding: 'json' })

This makes TypeScript typings easier (cc @MeirionHughes) as the main class can only be called in one way (with new) which is simpler to type, and the type declarations can have additional exports (that don't necessarily have a counterpart in JS) like reusable interfaces. Without messing with default exports. E.g.:

export class ClassicLevel {
  // ...
}

export interface ReadOptions {
  fillCache?: boolean | undefined
}

[vweevers]

Closing as "resolved". If you have objections please raise them soon, because after landing https://github.com/Level/abstract-level/pull/8, I'll release abstract-level 1.0.0 and start to push new repo's - classic-level, memory-level and browser-level are code complete (what's left is mainly docs). I've been postponing benchmarks just because I'm not in the mood for that type of work (in my free time) and that's fine. I want to get this thing out the door. I'm not gonna do a prerelease round, going straight to 1.0.0 versions.