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Re: policy on binary/package naming convention



I took a stab at implementing the dbrief concept that I described
previously.  This tool is useful for me, and I am providing it in the
hope that other users find it useful as well.  please check out my
work at http://dbrief.sourceforge.net and provide feedback.

mike

> thank you for all of the interesting comments.

> what I am getting at is that there should be a simple way for the user
> to discover what he or she just installed.  "dpkg -L <package name>",
> which is a good start, gives you information about installed files,
> but the command itself is not easily discoverable (i didn't know about
> it, and i've been a Debian user for 1.5 years).

> there also isn't an easy way to discover package documentation.  yes,
> you can "$ cat /usr/share/doc/<package name>/README.Debian".  again,
> this is not discoverable, and often there isn't good information there
> anyway.  plus, i'm lazy, and that's a lot of path typing.

> maybe what is needed is an option something like "$ dpkg -B foo" or "$
> dbrief foo", which would produce a brief output something like:

> foo Debian README:
> <output of $(cat /usr/share/doc/foo/Debian.README)>

> foo upstream README:
> <output of $(zcat /usr/share/doc/foo/README.gz)>

> foo help:
> <maybe the output of $(foo --help)>

> foo binaries:
> /usr/bin/foo
> .
> .
> .

> well, again, "$ dpkg -B" and "$ dbrief" aren't exactly discoverable.
> i don't know if any shell commands are really that discoverable.
> however, if users were trained (via release documentation) that this
> is how to discover new packages, i think it would be very useful.

> the above would be useful in synaptic as well as a compliment to
> "browse documentation."

> more thoughts/ideas?

> mike



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