[clug] apt naming convention

[Michael Cohen]

Chris,
  the *-common packages contain common files for the variants of the package.
  Generally you dont really select the *common packages directly, they just get
  selected to fill dependencies. For example vim-gtk is what you might want, it
  will pull in whatever common packages are needed.

  apache2 is a different program than apache. You generally dont select
  libraries directly unless you want to compile something which needs them (in
  that case you need to choose the *-dev version). Generally they will be
  pulled in to satisfy dependencies.

  Usually there will be a meta-package which pulls in whatever is needed. For
  example gnome-desktop-environment pulls in heaps of stuff but doesnt have
  much in itself.  

  Hope this makes sense, as im not really a debian developer just a user, so i
  might stand corrected.

  Michael.
  
On Sun, Jan 07, 2007 at 09:18:25PM +1100, Chris Smart wrote:
> I'm playing with Debian on a box of mine and I'm a little confused.
> Installing various packages from the repository I generally just do
> "apt-get install package" but sometimes it's not available and I find
> variants. Sometimes it is there but there are other options, like
> package-bin, package-common, even package-new or package-old, sometimes
> has versions like package-2 or package2 and sometimes package as well as
> package-common with the same description? Some are libpackage others are
> package-lib.. etc
> 
> Some others make sense to me like postfix-mysql and postfix-ldap,
> apf-client and apf-server, but in general the naming convention seems
> strange to me. There is apache-common, apache2-common and apache2.2-common
> and I'm confused.
> 
> I'm hoping someone can help me understand it better so I don't go crazy :)
> 
> Thanks!
> Chris
> 
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