Bug#731987: lintian: False positive for sharedobject-in-library-directory-missing-soname

[Jakub Wilk <jwilk@debian.org>]

* Niels Thykier <niels@thykier.net>, 2014-10-01, 20:48:
> @Jörg: I think shotwell is a true positive.  The binary is - by readelf 
> - identified as a shared object.
>
> $ readelf -h  unpack/usr/lib/shotwell-video-thumbnailer | grep Type:
>  Type:                              DYN (Shared object file)

Presumably that's because it's a position-independent executable. They 
are identified by readelf as shared libraries because technically they 
ARE shared libraries.

> Compare this with (e.g.) /bin/ls, which is an executable.
>
> $ readelf -h  /bin/ls | grep Type:
>  Type:                              EXEC (Executable file)

$ readelf -h /bin/dash | grep Type:
 Type:                              DYN (Shared object file)

I think Lintian could assume that if a file has +x bit set, and it 
doesn't have *.so or *.so.* extension, then it wasn't meant to be a 
public shared library. (But maybe there's a better way. IANA ELF 
expert!)

(Personally I find the practice of putting private executables directly 
into /usr/lib/ a little bit odd. I'd expect them in /usr/lib/<package> 
instead.)

--
Jakub Wilk