Improve error message when dashes are used in PROVIDES or REQUIRES entries

[ghost]

I'm trying to package a command call diff-so-fancy.
The script is just a single perl script downloaded from github without external deps, hence a rather easy recipe.

I have in my recipe:

PROVIDES="
	cmd:diff-so-fancy
	"

Now this gives me the error

        recipe for diff_so_fancy-1.4.3 is still broken:
        Error: evaluating file /boot/home/proj/haikuports/app-misc/diff-so-fancy/work-1.4.3/port.recipe produced illegal value "cmd:diff-so-fancy" for key PROVIDES
        Error: dashes are not allowed in provides- or requires declarations

What should be done instead? escaping does not work. Is it ment to not be possible to package command names with dashes in them?

[augiedoggie]

https://github.com/haikuports/haikuports/wiki/HaikuPorter-HandlingRequirements#requiring-a-command

This is for REQUIRES instead of PROVIDES, but the same applies.

[ghost]

This would mean that haikuporter cannot distinquish between underscores and dashes?

[pulkomandy]

Yes, but it never was a problem so far.

[ghost]

Alright. That seems really strange to me, I'll assume it's a problem with using sh.
Anyhow, this should be better documented in the error that haikuporter spits out.

[augiedoggie]

I don't recall the exact reason but I believe it's to make parsing of package names/contents easier since a dash will always be a separator and not part of the package name or something.

[pulkomandy]

yes, this is not a bug but an intentional choice. The provides/requires can't have dashes so the dash always separates the package name and the package version and there is no risk of confusion.

It seems unlikely we could have two different commands, one with underscores and the other with dashes. If that was the case, we would probably rename one to avoid the risof mixing them up? So this restriction is acceptable and solves a lot of other possible confusion cases.

What do you want to be documented? "replace dashes with underscores"?

[ghost]

the line that haikuporter gives " Error: dashes are not allowed in provides- or requires declarations"
doesn't give any indication what can be done to mitigate it, which leads to some guessing what to do:
rename the command in the recipe?
substitute the char with something else?
escape the chars?

It wasn't obvious, atleast to me, that the solution is "replace with underscore", so i think haikuporter should simply suggest this when encountering it.
e.g " Error: dashes are not allowed in provides- or requires declarations. Underscores can be used instead"