What's the relationship between vendor, package, module and namespaces?

Question

Let's take the Contacts module inside my Magento 1.7 installation.

$ pwd
/var/www/vhosts/myproject/magento-1.7.0.2/app/code/core/Mage/Contacts

I know Contacts is the module, but is Mage the package, or the vendor? Then what's core? I'll heard them being described as 'code pools', but still not very clear.

And how does this relate to namespacing? (if it's relevant at all?)

Answer 1

Mage is the vendor. Core is the code pool that all core/default functionality goes into. Third party modules go in the community code pool and work you create should go in the local code pool.

So if you made a module it would be in app/code/local/dayuloli/modulename/.