Many of the bits of the policy manual, and informal practice, suggest naming directories after your package.
I just wanted to make a point that perhaps hasn't been entirely clear: when we say that you should name the directory after your package, you should think carefully about what aspect of and/or subsection of the package name to use. If the directory is some piece of package innards which nothing outside the package itself needs to care about and which the user never sees, then probably the actual package name is a good choice - that way if the package is renamed or forked in the future, it will be able to coexist with its differently-named predecessors. BUT if the directory is user-visible, or is going to be used by other packages, or needs to be configured in the user's PATH, or something, then it will often be better to pick the "stem" of the package name, or something else more stable. Also, if the package is renamed, then normally the existing config directory name, plugin directories, or whatever, should be retained unless there are good reasons not to. To change the directory name along with the package name may provide a minor benefit in neatness, but it causes a lot of transition aggro (for other maintainers, and of course for users/admins). In general, the principle should be that where to look in the filesystem for something should not depend on how the packages have been organised. For example, there has been a recent trend for FOO's documentation package FOO-doc to contain /usr/share/doc/FOO-doc/html/index.html (or whatever). I think this is daft. It should be in /usr/share/doc/FOO/html/index.html. That way you can find the documentation for FOO in the filesystem without knowing whether the FOO package happens to have been split into FOO and FOO-doc, or for that matter libFOO8.9-dev, FOO-bin, etc. etc. etc. Ian. A footnote: I was in part prompted to write this email by /usr/lib/git-core, the directory that some git .debs expect you to put on your PATH if you prefer to have "git-WOMBAT" commands rather than just "git WOMBAT". But since git upstream think this directory should be called $(libexec)/git-core, it's very probably right to keep that name in Debian. So that's not a good example after all. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/19749.55214.255224.395...@chiark.greenend.org.uk
