Re: Package separation/naming conventions
Jakub Wilk <jwilk@debian.org> writes:
> * Ole Streicher <debian-devel@liska.ath.cx>, 2011-09-23, 13:58:
>> My question is not the naming of the binary packages. The original library
>> is called "wcslib", and to maximize confusion, there exists somewhere else
>> another (not compatible, less used) library for the same task, called
>> "libwcs", which is part of a "wcstools" package. To avoid naming confusion,
>> I would like to name all packages "wcslib";
>
> If you believe that shared library name is confusing, then convince upstream
> to change it.
This is not an option: the "wcslib" exists under this name already for
some years, and is always referenced under this name. Changing the name
to libwcs would confuse people with the older libwcs library (which is
incompatible).
>>however lintian doesn't like my idea to call the shared library package
>>"wcslib4". Can/should I ignore this warning since I have a reason to do
>>so?
> You can. You should not. :)
What is the rationale behind this? The package name is (as far as I
understand) for the user, and dependencies are resolved not on the
package name, but on the soname (am I right here?). And for the user, it
is important that this is the libwcs coming from the wcslib package and
not the one coming from the wcstools package. Why not put that into the name?
>> I found some other packages (namely zlib1g) where the package name does not
>> match the soname.
> This is not a very good example. The Debian package name is like this for
> historical reasons. (And you don't change shared library package name without
> very good reasons, especially not when it has over 1900 reverse
> dependencies...)
The same: isn't the dependency made of the soname and not of the package
name? I thought this is just this debian/shlibs stuff about?
At the end, naming them as I proposed (libwcs4, wcslib-dev, wcslib-doc,
wcslib-util) would be OK for Debian?
Best
Ole
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