Gavin Baker <gavinb@antonym.org> writes: > Hi, > > I am working on packaging a fairly large library. Along with the main > tarball comes a bunch of example programs. > > I intend to provide a libfoo-examples package, which would include both > the source and the binaries of these example programs (which the user > would reasonably expect). > Well, normally example binaries are not shipped, since they usually provide no real functionality. > According to policy: > > 13.6: [...] If the purpose of a package is to provide examples, then the > example files may be installed into /usr/share/doc/package > > So is it reasonable to put the sources (C++) into > /usr/share/libfoo-examples/src and likewise the prebuilt binaries into > /usr/share/libfoo-examples/bin? > > If not, what is the preferred way? > Current practice seem to be to put the example sources into /usr/share/doc/<package>/examples (along with a Makefile, possibly) and don't ship binaries. > Part II: > > This library also has some sample applications (more sophisticated than > the simple examples mentioned above) that come in a separate tarball. > The purpose of these apps is twofold: a) to show how to build complete > apps with this library, and b) to be useful in their own right (eg. data > viewing and conversion). > > Given this, it seems it would make sense to treat the package as an > "extended examples" package and have a /usr/share/libfoo-apps/{bin|src} > just like above. Right? > > However - some of these apps are useful in their own right (such as a > data viewer or conversion tool). Is it ok to place a symlink from > /usr/bin to /usr/share/libfoo-apps/bin so that users can invoke these > apps directly? > I'd go for just putting them into /usr/bin (watch out for namespace collisions/pollution, though) and not install the source at all. A user needing the source could always 'apt-get source libfoo-apps'. Just my 4 €-cent... HTH, It's GNU/Linux dammit!