Comments on: always lowercase py files, always

By: Rob Galanakis

Rob Galanakis — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:06:40 +0000

Spencer, it doesn’t have to be months down the line- the system may still be in development, someone catches the module name during code review but it’s been checked in, and now this inactive module on other people’s machines is cased incorrectly. Better- like you say- to go all case insensitive from the start, and make sure people know it (I’m not advocating trying to go in and fix otherwise working code).

Otherwise, if you do have to change it, you should do like you say (and I mention in the article), rename the module something else entirely.

By: Spencer Luebbert

Spencer Luebbert — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:40:57 +0000

It totally makes sense to do all lower case from the start. But I don’t understand why this needs to be fixed after the file has already been integrated into a bunch of code. I mean aren’t you manufacturing the problem by trying to change case in the first place? Why not just change it back to myModule to avoid fixing it locally on everyone’s machine. Or if your really really must make it lower case, just change the name completely to like mybettermodule, so that source control doesn’t get confused.

By: James Thiele

James Thiele — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 17:29:27 +0000

Also some versions of Mac OS X have case insensitive file names.

By: Rob Galanakis

Rob Galanakis — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 10:22:49 +0000

In reply to David. David: That's true, but only for the local user. When other users sync that rename (integrate/delete), it will not change the casing.

By: David

David — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 09:49:52 +0000

In both git and svn all you have to do is rename your file using your VCS, rather than windows.

According to the Perforce documentation, ( http://kb.perforce.com/?article=007 ) the situation is the exact same.

This is really a question of people not using their VCS properly , and not a python problem at all.

By: GDorn

GDorn — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 08:01:39 +0000

Agreed. While you should follow PEP8 unless you have a good reason not to, the real WTF here is your VCS.

By: robert

robert — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 01:53:01 +0000

Seems to me the problem rather stems from the revision control system which seems to rely on the OS for file name comparison (but maybe there’s a hidden switch somewhere deep inside P4 to change this?). It’s a bit strange that P4 works like that – given that there’s surely enough devs who use it with Python, mixed OS environments or other case sensitive languages that care about file names.

I never ran into this problem myself, but thanks for the warning.