In discussion with Monty, he said that renames of this sort have caused unexpected problems before (README.gcov had to be renamed README-gcov), so that README- is preferred to README. Sergei, if you agree, can close as won't fix.

There are few scripts to search and/or delete for '*.gcov' files (and such a command is often typed manually too), and it was a nuisance when README.gcov matched the pattern. I don't think it's a particularly strong reason, but still a reason.

So, if there is no good reason to use 'README.*' template, I can make sure that all our readmes coherently follow the 'README-*' pattern

I just wanted some coherent naming, so I checked, if it is typo or if it has a purpose.
Coherent style would be nice, but I'm ok with "won't fix".

It looks, most of READMEs use dot: (search in exctracted tarball)

$ find mariadb-10.1.22/ | grep "README."

mariadb-10.1.22/unittest/README.txt

mariadb-10.1.22/Docs/README-wsrep

mariadb-10.1.22/plugin/auth_gssapi/README.md

mariadb-10.1.22/debian/mariadb-server-10.1.README.Debian

mariadb-10.1.22/debian/mariadb-client-10.1.README.Debian

mariadb-10.1.22/debian/libmariadbclient-dev.README.Maintainer

mariadb-10.1.22/zlib/README.MySQL

mariadb-10.1.22/pcre/doc/html/README.txt

mariadb-10.1.22/mysql-test/suite/rpl/extension/README.checksum

mariadb-10.1.22/mysql-test/suite/large_tests/README.TXT

mariadb-10.1.22/mysql-test/suite/funcs_1/README.txt

mariadb-10.1.22/mysql-test/suite/optimizer_unfixed_bugs/README.txt

mariadb-10.1.22/mysql-test/collections/README.experimental

mariadb-10.1.22/mysql-test/README.gcov

mariadb-10.1.22/mysql-test/README.stress

mariadb-10.1.22/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/benchmark/fixtures/geo-select/README.txt

mariadb-10.1.22/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/README.md

mariadb-10.1.22/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/vendor/plugins/groonga-normalizer-mysql/README.md

mariadb-10.1.22/storage/mroonga/packages/windows/README.md

mariadb-10.1.22/storage/tokudb/PerconaFT/README.md

mariadb-10.1.22/storage/tokudb/mysql-test/README.tokudb

mariadb-10.1.22/storage/federatedx/README.windows

Sure, I can make it consistent. Keep .md and .txt (where the extension means the file type) and use - where it doesn't.

I'll probably leave debian README's as is, debian packaging is too fragile, but you, probably, don't care about those

Can be closed.

I really don't care too much.
I wanted to fix it, if there wouldn't be any reason no to. However there is, so I'll stick to my way.

There is no good suggestion on what kind of naming scheme we should standardize on, so we cannot do it a the moment. We will continue with having various naming styles for now..

Also, if we were to standardize on a certain naming scheme, we would need to coordinate with upstreams (e.g. TokuDB, Galera) to check if they are willing to adopt the same style as well.