Bug#486453: Policy 8.2 suggests libraryname-tools, but not libraryname-utils

[Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org>]

Fabian Greffrath <greffrath@leat.rub.de> writes:

> Package: debian-policy
> Version: 3.8.0.1
> Severity: minor
>
> Hi,
>
> Policy currently reads:
>
>> 8.2 Shared library support files
> [...]
>> Run-time support programs that use the shared library but are not
>> required for the library to function or files used by the shared
>> library that can be used by any version of the shared library
>> package should instead be put in a separate package. This package
>> might typically be named libraryname-tools; note the absence of the
>> soversion in the package name.
>
> However, in practice the -utils suffix for the discussed type of
> packages seems to be much more widely used than the -tools suffix that
> is suggested by policy 8.2. On my system I get the following results:
>
> $ dpkg -l \*-tools | wc -l
> 27
>
> $ dpkg -l \*-utils | wc -l
> 38

I'm not sure it is relevant, but another data point would be *-bin:

jas@mocca:~$ dpkg -l lib\*-bin|wc -l
20
jas@mocca:~$ 

The lack of plurals here can also be confusing:

jas@mocca:~$ dpkg -l \*-util|tail -3
+++-====================================-===========================-============================================
un  db4.6-util                           <none>                      (no description available)
un  libpam0g-util                        <none>                      (no description available)
jas@mocca:~$ 

/Simon