It seems like there isn't a tracking issue about this long-term effort yet (e.g. to mention in commit messages and to make it sprintable).

Nixpkgs moved to an explicit versioning scheme, with the plan to change all packages like so:

-name = "mypackage-1.2.3";
+pname = "mypackage";
+version = "1.2.3";

See the sprint checkbox list for the remaining packages: #103997 (comment)

This obviates meta.version and meta.tag; they should be removed (as discussed in #12156).

Tangentially related: Where to put unstable versions / package names (see #68518).

Details on what's right and what isn't

Note that the following pattern is not good because it still uses name:

let
  pname = "mypackage";
  version = "1.2.3";
in
  mkDerivation {
    name = "${pname}-${version}";
  }

In the new approach, pname and version have to be given directly to mkDerivation.

You can use mkDerivation rec to be able to re-use e.g. version in src or other fields:

mkDerivation rec {
  pname = "mypackage";
  version = "1.2.3";

  src = {
    ... expression using `version` variable here ...
  };
}

Automation

You can link big treewide efforts/PRs here (tick merged ones):

• treewide: name -> pname #67513
• treewide: name -> pname #66751
• [bot] name -> pname (easy cases) #66585

Tasks

• Move all packages from "name" to "pname"+"version", remove all uses of meta.version and meta.tag
  • See Change all packages from "name" to "pname"+"version", remove all uses of meta.version and meta.tag #103997 (comment) for the sprint checkbox list remaining packages
• Somebody confirm that meta.tag should indeed be removed as well
• Remove update-walker.sh script? Ask @7c6f434c: meta.updateWalker: remove because it is not used #151363
• Remove nixpkgs manual entry about updateWalker because it's the last reference to update-walker.sh: meta.updateWalker: remove because it is not used #151363