Distribution vs package naming

[labdmitriy]

Hi @ionelmc,

I read your posts before and just now I find your great cookiecutter template, thank you for your work!

Recently I gathered information about package vs distribution names for Python libraries, especially about their naming. Based on this information I wrote the article - https://labdmitriy.github.io/blog/distributions-vs-packages/

I found that your cookiecutter template has the most explicit distinction between repository, distribution and package names and you convert hyphens to underscores for distribution names. Could you please share your thoughts about this choice (why do you use hyphens instead of underscores for distribution names) and probably any information/feedback you consider useful? Then I can add this information to the blog with the link to you and your template.

Thank you.

[ionelmc]

I guess the main reason I have this dist/package/project name distinction is that I don't always have a consistent scheme for all my projects:

• Sometimes the dist name I want is already taken on PyPI.
• Django projects have a differently styled project name. Pointless to have python-django-foobar yes?

About the dashes... it's just styling at this point. https://pypi.org/project/lazy-object-proxy/ is the same as https://pypi.org/project/lazy_object_proxy/

To put it differently: you'll see dashes more often than underscores in urls in general. I haven't given it much thought, just went with what people usually have in urls (dashes instead of underscores), sorry to disappoint :-)

[labdmitriy]

Thanks a lot for your answer!

[labdmitriy]

@ionelmc if you don’t mind, I will include your template and answer to the post because it is also useful information

[ionelmc]

Sure, thanks.