How granular should a package{,set} be?

[Matthew Kirkwood <matthew@hairy.beasts.org>]

Hi there,

I'm starting to investigate making Debian packages of
something I wrote -- a proxy firewall kit[0].

I have so far assembled a single package containing
all of the binaries and some documentation[1].  dpkg-deb
says

 Installed-Size: 352

so it's not worryingly large.

However, it contains a bunch of largely orthogonal
components:

 * some application proxies
   + ftp
   + pop-3
   + http (not finished)
   + smtp (not finished)
 * some daemons
   + an identd
   + an httpd
 * some tools
   + packet filter log parsing tools
   + something more generally useful (like "since")
 * some bits (which are useless without one of the
   daemons or proxies)

The documentation isn't huge (though it's not included in
the above Installed-Size number yet), but the few files
discuss pretty much everything together.

Debian (I'm fairly new to it, but have been using Linux for
a long while, and am quite comfortable which making RPMs)
seems to have a fairly granular approach to packaging.

So I'm tempted to re-jig my package into a lot of separate
packages:

 + fk-proxies
 + fk-identd
 + fk-httpd
 + fk-logfilters
 + tailnew (see "like \"since\"")
 + fk-authslave (recommends fk-proxies|fk-identd|fk-httpd)
 + fk-doc (recommends as above)

"tailnew" can also build with either gdbm or tdb.  The latter
is technically superior, but the former seems more common.
Debian packages are available for both, of course.

The other packages might also recommend fk-doc.

All packages might be wise to recommend that the same versions
of all related pacakges.

With this all written down, the answer to "Is this excessively
granular?" seems obvious.  However, consider that the target
audience may well appreciate not having to install proxies the
she won't use.

So, should I split my package (also, remembering that I could
do this upstream too if it seemed wise) or should it stay as a
single package?

Answers on a postcard please (or this mailing list will do :-)

Thanks,
Matthew

[0] http://hairy.beasts.org/fk/
[1] I'm still undecided on trying to become a Debian
    maintainer or trying to foist it onto someone else,
    but that's question for another time.