Hi,
I have a site generator/manager called nifty site manager (I just updated the design and branding of the official site), two very convenient names for that are ‘nsm’ and ‘nift’, I would like for users to be able to use both. Is it possible to add ‘nift’ as an alias for ‘nsm’? ‘nsm’ is very easy to type, while ‘nift’ is a nice catchy name.
N.
‘nift’ isn’t a command from at least the Ubuntu archive, though it is close to nft (nftables) and nit (python-nevow).
+1 for auto-alias. @reviewers - can others vote?
+1 for auto-alias from me too - in that case can you please register the snap name nift in the snap store as well so that it is clear this is not available to other snaps so there is no possible future conflict?
Doneskies, I have registered nift in the snap store.
With aliases, does it then work for people to do snap install nift too? Otherwise maybe I should submit it as nift primarily and have nsm be the alias?
No, you would have one snap and an alias for the other name in
general. So it is up to you which should be the primary - it would seem
to me that since you generally refer to this as nift (and the website is
nift.cc etc) that nift would be the more appropriate name for the snap.
In that case would you even see a need for the nsm alias (other than for
compatibility for anyone who has installed the nsm snap already I
suppose?)
It was originally nifty-site-manager.com and I only recently ‘renamed/rebranded’ the naming to ‘nift’ in the last week. My apologies for any inconvenience with having added it as nsm in the past.
I would definitely still like nsm as an alias because it’s a short descriptive acronym that is much easier to type. It’s a command line tool so nsm is typed quite frequently.
Do I just get snapcraft to build the repo from scratch again for Nift? What do I do about nsm?
This makes a bit of a mess actually.
You already have a snap called nsm which has some users. You can either continue to maintain nsm, and add have us add an alias for nift to that snap. Alternatively you can create a brand new snap called nift as you have an abandon the nsm snap. We don’t have the process for renaming a snap (e.g. from nsm to nift). You could make nsm private and only publish to the nift snap, orphaning people on nsm, or make a special build of nsm which “nudges” people over to remove nsm and install nift. Up to you 
My apologies for the mess. I’d be happy to continue maintaining both nsm and nift if Snapcraft are okay with me doing so? I can put a thing on the main page for nsm pointing them to Nift and we can retire nsm if the number of installs ever drops back down to 0.
Alternatively I’m happy to just keep nsm and have nift as an alias, I am probably going to keep the install command for chocolatey as choco install nsm.
Sorry, maybe “mess” was a bit OTT.
I’m not about to reveal numbers of nsm users here, but you could probably make it unlisted, make sure any promotional messages you’ve posted online refer to the new snap name. I’m sure over time the number of users of nsm will diminish.
Yep fair enough, Nift/nsm has only gone on to any app stores recently and is still new so I’m pretty happy with the number of users so far, at least it seems to be slowly growing (I’m quite excited!).
I will go with the unlisted route and watch to see if the number of users diminishes over time. Thanks for your help.
No worries, have a great weekend.
Okay I’ve added nift and unlisted nsm. A lot of my documentation uses nsm as the command even though nift is offered as a duplicate, therefore it’d be really nice to get nsm as an alias for nift if possible. Can we do that from this post or should I make a new post with a new request?
What’s the status with adding nsm as an alias for nift? Should I make a new post for that given this was a post to add nift as an alias for nsm? (the other way around)
The prior vote was for adding the nift alias to the nsm snap. Since that vote, the nsm snap is unlisted with a new nift snap that needs an nsm alias. Therefore we need a new vote.
+1 to grant an auto-alias for nsm to the nift snap. nsm is close to ‘nasm’ and there is an nsm command that comes from the linuxptp project, but it is for NetSync Monitor and is sufficiently different from nift that I don’t consider it a problem.
@reviewers - can others vote on this?
+1 from me too for the nsm alias for the nift snap
2 votes for, 0 against for nsm auto-alias. This is now live.
