Re: Names, -common vs. -data

[Matt Brubeck <mbrubeck@cs.hmc.edu>]

Chipzz wrote:

> I wondered that too, and extracted the gtk and atk packages into a
> temp dir with dpkg-deb -x. It appears they contain the translations.
> Why exactly those aren't included in the main packages, I don't
> understand.

This is so that shared data is stored in a single architecture-
independent package, instead of being duplicated in the binary
packages for each architecture.  The intent is to save space on
the archive and mirrors.  I think that Lintian even has a check
for large amounts of /usr/shara data in arch-dependent packages.

I don't know why some some packages use -data and some use -common
for their arch-independent files.