Policy of capitalisation of <packagename> in /usr/share/?
Dear all
I recently posted bug #545127 (see [1]) as I noticed that the package
`publican' stores some shared files in /usr/share/Publican/ but stores
its documentation in /usr/share/doc/publican/.
As an end user, I expected /usr/share/publican/, given that the
package name is `publican'.
However, the upstream package uses /usr/share/Publican/. The Debian
Maintainer (Mikahil Gusarov, in CC) does not wish to change the
upstream source without a good reason, and that is perfectly
understandable.
The Debian Policy [2] has two places in which it says something about
/usr/share/: sections 8.2 (Shared library support files) and 10.7.3
(Configuration Files > Behavior). However, according to Mikhail both
sections are not applicable, either because there are currently no
shared packages or because `publican' has no ./configure. [Correct me
if I'm wrong, Mikhail.] Mikhail suggests to change some of the
wording in the policy under 10.7.3 (see [1]).
I see a few options here:
- the policy does not cover this issue, and it is up to the the Debian
Maintainer to decide how the directory in /usr/share/ is called;
- the policy requires that directories in /usr/share/ be exactly
/usr/share/<package-name>/. Given that <package-name> must use
lowercase letters (Debian Policy 5.6.1). Most packages already do
this, but this would affect some packages like X11 or PolicyKit, as
Mikhail Gusarov noted;
- the policy recommends /usr/share/<package-name>/, unless it is too
difficult to implement.
I would be most grateful if anyone could clarify this situation.
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=545127
[2] http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/
Best regards
--
Danai SAE-HAN (韓達耐)
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