I've recently learned that one factor contributing to the long review
delay for the Debian sagemath package has been the fact that their tools
for reviewing packages for copyright issues weren't able to open ".spkg"
files (they do handle .tar.bz2 files correctly, but apparently detect file
type by extension).
However, I think this is a good opportunity to discuss whether the merits
of the .spkg extension for Sage packages. Fundamentally, we're using a
nonstandard extension for a standard file type. This breaks various tools
that try to infer file types from extensions (the most common nuisance for
me is bash's tab completion of "tar -xf").
I sent the Debian folks a patch to treat ".spkg" files like ".tar.bz2"
files for their tool, but I doubt that the people who maintain bash
completion defaults are going to be excited about adding special code for
Sage's .spkg extension.
So, I'd like to get people's opinions on moving to standard .tar.bz2
extensions for spkg archives.
If people think it's a good idea in principle, I'll work on generating a
patch for gracefully handling the transition without e.g. making everyone
rebuild every package in their extant sage trees (which I suspect is the
largest practical concern).
-Tim Abbott
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