On 11/5/19 7:18 PM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
"name mangling": Why is this a problem? First of all, it is not mangling, it
is suffixing. The original name is retained unchanged and nothing is
prepended to it, only appended. And, e.g., Qt 3, 4, and 5 are all different
packages, so why should they have the same package name?

For this specific point, it is nice to have a generic name (qt, or python, or sqlite, or whatever) that describes the current, default version. Most of my databases don't care about sqlite2, so typing sqlite3 feels like some sort of cargo cult ceremony. I feel the same is true of most software---the ecosystem evolves and tends to be compatible with latest version of their dependencies. The suffixed names should be used only if the underlying system really cares about that specific suffix.

This does not contradict any of what you said---just that I end up creating aliases (sqlite -> sqlite3, python -> python3, etc) that in my opinion should be provided by the distribution. It's not a  big deal, in any case: maybe the biggest practical effect of all this is that default names promote keeping up with the ongoing development----it's harder to write Python2-dependent code if you have to explicitly invoke #!/bin/python2, as sort of a version-shaming.
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