policy on binary/package naming convention

[Michael Gilbert <michael.s.gilbert@gmail.com>]

Hello all,

Is there (or should there be) a Debian policy on binary file naming?

For example, today I installed the "linhdd" package.  To invoke the
program, I typed "$ linhdd".  However, I received a "command not
found" message.  So, I did "$ apt-file search linhdd" and found that
the binary is actually entitled "linHDD".  This happens often enough
when installing new packages that it has become a nuisance (package
linuxdcpp binary is dcpp, etc.).

This is bad in terms of usability/discoverability.  I (and I assume
most users) expect the binary to be of the same name and case as the
package name.  I know how to discover the correct binary, but I would
suspect that many users do not know apt-file exists; let alone how to
use it.

Man pages often suffer from the same issue.  I install package foo,
and to learn about it, I type man foo, but there is no man page on
foo.

Would a policy that requires binary and man page adherence to the
package name be feasible and desirable?

I know that there are multi-binary packages, but usually one can be
considered the primary (and hence conform to the package name).

There are some other issues as well.  Some packages do not provide
binaries at all (gnome-core, documentation, etc.).  And some have
different names than the primary binary because it is a particular
distribution of popular software (package tetex binary latex, etc.).

Thank you for your thoughts and consideration.

Regards,
Michael Gilbert