"keyserver" is correct

[DimitriPapadopoulos]

It looks like keyserver is a correct technical word in cryptography. For example, the Wikipedia key server entry has 27 occurrences of key server and 31 occurrences of keyserver.

On Google, 1,140,000 hits for keyserver and 537,000 hits for key server - but it's true that a large part of the keyserver hits are command line examples, code, URLs.

See discussion in numpy/numpy#19911 (comment).

[peternewman]

I'd dispute this somewhat, Wikipedia seems to just switch arbitrarily between the two without defining either one or being consistent.

The more interesting this is that a company copyrighted it (in the software licensing sense):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_license_server

Also this is in the code dictionary already, we wouldn't generally recommend running that over a codebase without careful checking of the results. Outside of code it's still likely to be a typo for the two word phrase.

[peternewman]

Looking at the PGP page, and the phrasing on the general Wikipedia page, I wonder if it's a defined term in terms of PGP:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

[DimitriPapadopoulos]

I agree, keyserver is mostly found in contexts associated to PGP and sometimes to license servers.

It's just that there are so many occurrences of keysever out there - more than occurrences of key server - that I doubt they will ever be considered typos by projects maintainers. At least that my impression after suggesting patches with keyserver->key server to a few projects.

[matkoniecz]

Wikipedia seems to just switch arbitrarily between the two without defining either one or being consistent.

I would consider it as indication that both forms are correct.

developed their trademarked KeyServer software license

In such case wide use of "keyserver" and "KeyServer" when referring to generic keyservers would help with turning it into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark - so I would consider it as additionally beneficial (trademarking generic terms is awful, especially as trademarks can last indefinitely)

Also this is in the code dictionary already, we wouldn't generally recommend running that over a codebase without careful checking of the results.

Though giving suggestions that are going to be considered as false positives is not helpful.

[DimitriPapadopoulos]

My understanding of the rules is that we use formal, curated dictionaries as references – but I do not make the rules. It looks like we haven't been able to find keyserver in such dictionaries.

Again, perhaps the way out can be to clarify the rules, in the README or help – not sure who should do that.

As I already wrote, I can fully understand your merge request here. However, each individual exception to a rule, generates questions for other individual cases. Some argue for and some against. It all takes time nobody has. In any case, I will not decide myself in this specific case.

And again, do remember, codespell just provides suggestions and take suggestions with a grain of salt. This is not a law enforcement agency coming after misspells 😄

[DimitriPapadopoulos]

Perhaps it should be moved to dictionary_rare.txt instead of dictionary_code.txt, but that would probably be even worse because dictionary_rare.txt is a default dictionary, unlike dictionary_code.txt.

[matkoniecz]

My understanding of the rules is that we use formal, curated dictionaries as references – but I do not make the rules. It looks like we haven't been able to find keyserver in such dictionaries.

In such case sorry for making PR that is not fixing an actual problem - though ideally it would be documented somewhere.

Still, especially for slang and technical terms I would not fully trust "formal, curated dictionaries".