Re: [BuildStream] Invalid characters for element names

[Jim MacArthur <jim macarthur codethink co uk>]

In 07/12/2018 15:54, Chandan Singh wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> As we already use colon (`:`) as a separator for specifying cross-junction
> elements, I was wondering if it would make sense to disallow elements to have
> it in their names. This was bought up in comments on #809 [1] and !998 [2].
>
> As we discussed on GitLab, this is already an issue for the CLI as it will not
> work correctly if a project has a junction element with `:` in its name. So, I
> think we should maintain a list of invalid characters and disallow elements
> that violate this policy. I imagine this check to work in the same the recent
> change for mandating `.bst` extension works.
>
> While we are doing this change, are there any characters that we would like to
> disallow from element names, and reserve them for internal use?
My first thought is to heavily restrict it now, to alphanumeric ASCII, 
hyphen, underscore and '+'. That is all freedesktop-sdk needs (but 
please do say if anyone know of another project this wouldn't work for).

It's easier to restrict it now and allow more characters in future than 
to try and restrict it when people already have elements using unusual 
characters.

Jim