Re: Policy-problem: Split package with libraries or not?

[Thomas -Balu- Walter <debian@b-a-l-u.de>]

Hi Josip,

thanks for replying.

On Sun, Sep 28, 2003 at 06:20:35PM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> When the maintainer doesn't think there's any reason for people to use the
> library separate from the program, they can do so. The Policy verbiage may
> sound rigid but if it's the right thing to do, it's the right thing to do.
> Investigate the purpose of this library and you'll probably come to your
> own conclusion.

I've searched for other packages with similar "problems" and noticed
that there were more packages including libraries and things I thought
had to be split. That made me have a closer look at the policy again,
since it could not be that there were many broken packages and no one
noticed it yet :)

I finally found the solution while searching for exemptions:
"Shared object files (often .so files) that are not public libraries,
that is, they are not meant to be linked to by third party executables
(binaries of other packages), should be installed in subdirectories of
the /usr/lib directory. Such files are exempt from the rules that govern
ordinary shared libraries, except that they must not be installed
executable and should be stripped.[48]"

The footnote 48 tells me exactly what I had thought already, but didn't
find a proove yet:
"A common example are the so-called "plug-ins", internal shared objects
that are dynamically loaded by programs using dlopen(3)."

This message is just to be complete and help others who might stumble
across this too.

     Balu