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Well, I spent about 20 minutes hunting down repositories trying
and have now discovered that that particular package should be installed thusly:

slapt-get --install MPlayer

This is (not to put too fine a point on it) a giant digital hemmorhoid, as I have no clue what packages will include random caps. Is this a problem with the sources repo I'm using, or (if not) is there a comprehensive packages list I can find to help enlighten me as to the proper capitalization on more commonly used packages?

Thanks!

What about doing a simple search? Sometimes the solutions is easier than it seems.

That's actually how I found out that it was in uppercase.

My question is WHY is it (or any package, for that matter) in uppercase? Seems a little bit weird to have such a common package arbitrarily capitalized.

EDIT:

Thank you, by the way. That IS good advice for others having the same issue.

MPlayer is an upstream Slackware package, so in fact you would have to ask Patrick Volderding. But I'd say that's just the official spelling as you can find out by checking MPlayers homepage: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/

Usually the packages have the exact same name as the source archive they are built from and that's fine. No random renaming.

Another difference is that MPlayer includes mencoder.
mplayer package doesn't include mencoder.

Another difference is that MPlayer includes mencoder.
mplayer package doesn't include mencoder.

Now see - THAT makes a ton of sense, and I can totally get behind it. MPlayer = all the goodies, mplayer = base package. Is that a common convention among Slack packages, or just in this instance?

Sorry for all the "why is the sky blue?" type questions, but I'm just not used to distros with capitalized letters in their package names, and it was throwing me for a loop.

Thanks, everyone.

No, you're confused.

MPlayer, is the original project, named exactly that way. Homepage: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/
It includes a player (mplayer) and an encoder (mencoder). The package for MPlayer you'll find in gslapt is packaged by Pat Volkerding for Slackware and naturally it is also available in Salix.
mplayer2, is a fork of MPlayer, named exactly that way (all lowercase). Homepage: http://www.mplayer2.org/
It only includes a player (also named mplayer), that by now has some significant differences and improvements over the original project. An encoder is not bundled as the mplayer2 devs have dropped it because they think it is a terrible mess of code. The package for mplayer2 you'll find in gslapt is packaged by me for Salix.

They are different projects.

gapan: Thanks for the clarification. I knew about mplayer2 being a different package entirely, but thought djemos was referring to a package callded "mplayer" (perhaps that had to be downloaded and compiled, rather than in the repos.)

Unfortunately, that means I'm back to still being a little fuzzy on why they're case sensitive. Seems like it could cause a lot of "package not found" errors.

In Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/apt-based systems, worked fine. Checking the letter case (in the case of Salix) isn't a problem when it's one or two packages, but when I do something like:
it seems like it becomes a MUCH bigger issue.

Is the a switch to have slapt-get ignore case entirely? as in if I type: it will accept it in lieu of

.. or WXWidgets or wxWidgets or... well, you get the idea.

The thing is - if you're familiar with a lot of packages (as I am), but not with the particulars of how they're capitalized in SalixOS (as I am not,) it seems like an inconvenience to have to look it up for every package, and remember what is capitalized in which package. Ergo, if there's a way to make slapt-get IGNORE that.....

HalfNote5 wrote:In Debian/Ubuntu/Mint/apt-based systems,

Code: Select all

"sudo apt-get install mplayer mencoder"

worked fine.

That's because the folks at debian never use capital letters in package names.

HalfNote5 wrote:Checking the letter case (in the case of Salix) isn't a problem when it's one or two packages, but when I do something like:

Code: Select all

slapt-get --install lame mplayer mencoder audactiy alsa-tools jackd rosegarden hydrogen rezound

it seems like it becomes a MUCH bigger issue.

that's because you're not using the correct package names. Package names are just filenames, and filenames are case-sensitive in *nix. There is no "mplayer" package, but there is an "MPlayer" package. Furthermore, there is no "mencoder" package (it's included in the MPlayer package), no "audactiy" package (there is "audacity"), no "alsa-tools" package (there is "alsa-utils"), no "jackd" package (there is "jack"), no "rosegarden" package and no "rezound" package. I don't see where you got all those package names in Salix and I don't see how that command should have worked. When you're installing a package in Salix, you should give the exact name as it is in the slackware/salix repositories, not as it is in the debian repositories. As when you're installing a package in debian, you should give the exact name as it is in the debian repositories, not as it is in the slackware/salix repositories.

HalfNote5 wrote: Is the a switch to have slapt-get ignore case entirely?

No there is no switch. Again, package names are just filenames and filenames in *nix are case-sensitive. "foo" is not the same as "FOO", is not the same as "Foo", is not the same as "fOO", is not the same as "FoO" etc.

HalfNote5 wrote:The thing is - if you're familiar with a lot of packages (as I am), but not with the particulars of how they're capitalized in SalixOS (as I am not,) it seems like an inconvenience to have to look it up for every package, and remember what is capitalized in which package. Ergo, if there's a way to make slapt-get IGNORE that.....

You're familiar with how a lot of packages are named in debian. That's a different thing that being familiar with a lot of packages in general. If you were, you would have known that MPlayer is called exactly like that by its own developers. How the debian developers name it is completely irrelevant to Salix/Slackware.