Bug#525779: [checks/shared-libs] warn about private libraries/plugins in /usr/lib

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Raphael Geissert <atomo64@gmail.com> writes:

> Given the current pollution of /usr/lib of private libs/plugins it
> would be great if lintian warned about those.
>
> Probably something like the following (without the false positives and
> based on objdump's output):
>
> for f in /usr/lib/*.so.* ; do
>    nm -D "$f" | egrep -q '^[a-f0-9]+ [^U] [^_]' || echo "$f is private"
> done

Could you explain a little more about what that search does?  I think
it's trying to warn about any library that contains no public symbols
that don't begin with an underscore, but I'd expect most plugins and
libraries to satisfy that test anyway.

For example, I ran that check on everything in /usr/lib/sasl2, and none
of those were considered private even though they're all private plugins.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>