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
