Packaging library examples (binaries/source)

[Gavin Baker <gavinb@antonym.org>]

Hi,

I am working on packaging a fairly large library.  Along with the main
tarball comes a bunch of example programs.

I intend to provide a libfoo-examples package, which would include both
the source and the binaries of these example programs (which the user
would reasonably expect).

According to policy:

13.6: [...] If the purpose of a package is to provide examples, then the
example files may be installed into /usr/share/doc/package

So is it reasonable to put the sources (C++) into
/usr/share/libfoo-examples/src and likewise the prebuilt binaries into
/usr/share/libfoo-examples/bin?

If not, what is the preferred way?

Part II:

This library also has some sample applications (more sophisticated than
the simple examples mentioned above) that come in a separate tarball. 
The purpose of these apps is twofold: a) to show how to build complete
apps with this library, and b) to be useful in their own right (eg. data
viewing and conversion).

Given this, it seems it would make sense to treat the package as an
"extended examples" package and have a /usr/share/libfoo-apps/{bin|src}
just like above.  Right?

However - some of these apps are useful in their own right (such as a
data viewer or conversion tool).  Is it ok to place a symlink from
/usr/bin to /usr/share/libfoo-apps/bin so that users can invoke these
apps directly?

Thanks in advance-

  :: Gavin


-- 
Gavin Baker // gavinb*antonym_org // Linux|Python|Esperanto|MIDI|Cheese