Christoph Lameter contributed the "Web Standard"
The debian-policy mailing list has taken responsibility for the
contents of this document since September 1998, with the package
- maintainers responsible for packagingn adminstrivia only.
+ maintainers responsible for packaging adminstrivia only.
-->
<book>
because we are trying to produce, amongst other
things, a free Unix. Other packages without which the
system will not run well or be usable must also be
- here. This does <em>not</em> include Emacs, the X
- Window System, TeX or any other large applications.
- The <tt>important</tt> packages are just a bare
- minimum of commonly-expected and necessary tools.</p>
+ here. This does <em>not</em> include Emacs, the X
+ Window System, TeX or any other large applications.
+ The <tt>important</tt> packages are just a bare
+ minimum of commonly-expected and necessary tools.</p>
</item>
<tag><tt>standard</tt></tag>
<item>
required, but that's not what is meant here.) This is
all the software that you might reasonably want to
install if you didn't know what it was or don't have
- specialised requirements. This is a much larger system
+ specialized requirements. This is a much larger system
and includes the X Window System, a full TeX
- distribution, and lots of applications.</p>
+ distribution, and many applications.</p>
</item>
<tag><tt>extra</tt></tag>
<item>
<p>
This contains packages that conflict with others with
higher priorities, or are only likely to be useful if
- you already know what they are or have specialised
+ you already know what they are or have specialized
requirements.
</p>
</item>
<prgn>install-info</prgn>.</p>
<p>
- Packages should try to minimise the amount of prompting
+ Packages should try to minimize the amount of prompting
they need to do, and they should ensure that the user will
only ever be asked each question once. This means that
packages should try to use appropriate shared
<footnote>
<p>In an as yet unreleased version of the standard, the
location of the mail spool and state information
- directories has changed; and we proipose to follow the
- latter, since that would mean that we do not ahve to
+ directories has changed; and we propose to follow the
+ latter, since that would mean that we do not have to
move things around again when the new version of the
FHS comes around). The changes are, amongst others,
s%/var/mail%/var/spool/mail% and
<p>
Apart from this we should have dynamically allocated ids,
which should by default be arranged in some sensible
- order--but the behaviour should be configurable.</p>
+ order--but the behavior should be configurable.</p>
<p>
No package except <tt>base-passwd</tt> may modify
<prgn>adduser</prgn> will choose UIDs and GIDs for
user accounts in this range, though
<tt>adduser.conf</tt> may be used to modify this
- behaviour.</p>
+ behavior.</p>
</item>
<tag>30000-59999:</tag>
symbolic links in <tt>/etc/rc<var>n</var>.d</tt>.</p>
<p>
- To get the default behaviour for your package, put in your
+ To get the default behavior for your package, put in your
<tt>postinst</tt> script
<example>
update-rc.d <var>package</var> defaults >/dev/null
<p>
For example, the <prgn>kbd</prgn> package provides a
- script here for initialising the keyboard layout and
+ script here for initializing the keyboard layout and
console font and mode.</p>
<p>
</example>
You should print the `done.' right after the job has been completed,
so that the user gets informed why he has to wait. You can get this
- behaviour by saying
+ behavior by saying
<example>
echo -n "Doing something very useful..."
do_something
<item><p>emacs: the help prefix</p></item>
</taglist>
- The interpretation of any keyboard events should be
- independent of the terminal that's used (either the console,
- X terminal emulators, rlogin/telnet session, etc.).</p>
+ The interpretation of any keyboard events should be independent
+ of the terminal that's used, be it a virtual console, an X
+ terminal emulator, an rlogin/telnet session, etc.</p>
<p>
The following list explains how the different programs
<item><p>
Some systems (including previous Debian versions) use
xmodmap to arrange for both <tt><--</tt> and Delete
- to generate KB_Delete). We can change the behaviour
+ to generate KB_Delete). We can change the behavior
of their X clients via the same X resources that we
use to do it for our own, or have our clients be
configured via their resources when things are the
Certainly libtool is fully capable of linking against shared
libraries which don't have .la files, but being a mere shell
script it can add considerably to the build time of a
- libtool using package if that shellscript has to derive all
- this infomation from first principles for each library every
+ libtool using package if that shell-script has to derive all
+ this information from first principles for each library every
time it is linked. With the advent of libtool-1.4 (and to a
lesser extent libtool-1.3), the .la files will also store
information about inter-library dependencies which cannot
<p>
Packages that use libtool to create shared libraries must
include the <em>.la</em> files in the <em>-dev</em>
- packages. This is a good idea in general, and espescially
+ packages. This is a good idea in general, and especially
for static linking issues.
</p>
<heading>Symbolic links</heading>
<p>
- In general, symbolic links within a toplevel directory
+ In general, symbolic links within a top-level directory
should be relative, and symbolic links pointing from one
- toplevel directory into another should be absolute. (A
- toplevel directory is a sub-directory of the root
+ top-level directory into another should be absolute. (A
+ top-level directory is a sub-directory of the root
directory `/'.)</p>
<p>
<heading>Programs for the X Window system</heading>
<p>
- Some programs can be configured with or without support for
- the X Window System. Typically, binaries produced when
- built with X support will need the X shared libraries to
- run.</p>
-
+ Some programs can be configured with or without support for the X
+ Window System. Typically, binaries produced with support for X
+ will need the X shared libraries to run.
+ </p>
+
<p>
Such programs should be configured <em>with</em> X support,
and should declare a dependency on <tt>xlib6g</tt> (which
contains X shared libraries). Users who wish to use the
program can install just the relatively small
<tt>xfree86-common</tt> and <tt>xlib6g</tt> packages, and do
- not need to install the whole of X.
- </p>
-
+ not need to install the whole of X.</p>
+
<p>
Do not create two versions (one with X support and one
without) of your package.</p>
the directory <tt>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/app-defaults/</tt>.
They are considered as part of the program code. Thus, they
should not be modified and should not be tagged as
- <em>conffile</em>. If the local system administrator wants
- to customise X applications globally, a file with the same
+ <em>conffile</em>s. If the local system administrator wants
+ to customize X applications globally, a file with the same
name as that of the package should be placed in the
<tt>/etc/X11/Xresources/</tt> directory instead.
<em>Important:</em> packages that install files into the
declare a conflict with <tt>xbase (<<
3.3.2.3a-2)</tt>; if this is not done it is possible for the
package to destroy a previously-existing
- <tt>/etc/X11/Xresources</tt> <em>file</em>.
- </p>
-
+ <tt>/etc/X11/Xresources</tt> <em>file</em>.</p>
+
<p>
No package should ever install files into the directories
- <tt>/usr/bin/X11/</tt>, <tt>/usr/share/doc/X11/</tt>,
+ <tt>/usr/bin/X11/</tt>, <tt>/usr/doc/X11/</tt>,
<tt>/usr/include/X11/</tt>, or <tt>/usr/lib/X11/</tt>; these
directories are actually symbolic links, which <tt>dpkg</tt>
does not follow when unpacking a package. Instead, use
- <tt>/usr/X11R6/bin/</tt>,
- <tt>/usr/share/doc/</tt><var>package/</var> (i.e., place
- files with the rest of your package's documentation),
- <tt>/usr/X11R6/include/</tt>, and <tt>/usr/X11R6/lib/</tt>.
- It is permissible, and even preferable, however, for a
- package to refer to the <tt>/usr/{bin,include,lib}/X11/</tt>
- directories internally, however; this restriction governs
- only the paths used by the package as it is unpacked onto
- the system.
- </p>
-
- <p>
+ <tt>/usr/X11R6/bin/</tt>, <tt>/usr/doc/package/</tt> (i.e.,
+ place files with the rest of your package's documentation),
+ <tt>/usr/X11R6/include/</tt>, and
+ <tt>/usr/X11R6/lib/</tt>. This restriction governs only the
+ paths used by the package as it is unpacked onto the system; it
+ is permissible, and even preferable, for files within a package
+ (shell scripts, for instance) to refer to the
+ <tt>/usr/{bin,include,lib}/X11/</tt> directories rather than
+ their <tt>/usr/X11R6/</tt> counterparts -- this way they do not
+ have to be modified in the event that the X Window System
+ packages install their files into a different directory in the
+ future.</p>
+
+ <p>
If you package a program that requires the (non-free)
- OSF/Motif library, you should try to determine if the
+ OSF/Motif library, you should try to determine whether the
programs works reasonably well with the free
re-implementation of Motif called LessTif. If so, build the
package using the LessTif libraries; it can then go into the
main section of the package repository and become an
- official part of the Debian distribution.
- </p>
-
+ official part of the Debian distribution.</p>
+
<p>
If however, the Motif-based program works insufficiently
- well with LessTif, you should instead provide "-smotif" and
- "-dmotif" versions (appending these identifiers to the name
- of the package), which are statically and dynamically linked
+ well with LessTif, you should instead provide "-smotif" and "-dmotif"
+ versions (appending these identifiers to the name of the
+ package), which are statically and dynamically linked
against the Motif libraries, respectively. (All known
versions of OSF/Motif permit redistribution of
statically-linked binaries using the library, but check the
licensing on the package is compatible with the Debian Free
Software Guidelines, it may go into the contrib section;
otherwise it must go into the non-free section.
+
</p>
</sect>
directory. They are not all the licenses, just a few
common ones. I could use /usr/share/doc/common-licenses
but I think this is too long, and, after all, the GPL
- does not "document" anything, it is merely a licence.
+ does not "document" anything, it is merely a license.
</p>
</footnote>
</p>
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