I would like to receive some advice about the packaging of the PPL, both for RedHat/Fedora and for Debian. Things that are not clear to me is
1) how many packages should we have and what should they contain, and 2) how should the packages be named.
For RedHat, we currently have a base package called `ppl' containing the core library, plus the documentation and the ppl_lcdd program. Then we have the C, GNU Prolog, SWI Prolog, SICStus Prolog and YAP Prolog interfaces in the `ppl-c', `ppl-gprolog', `ppl-swi', `ppl-sicstus' and `ppl-yap' packages, respectively. The Parma Watchdog Library is currently included in the PPL and has a package called `ppl-pwl'. Finally, debug information if in `ppl-debuginfo'.
Michael has suggested that we should name the package `libppl1' and I think he will explain us whether this is an important convention of Debian or just a matter of personal taste. I do not think that, for the PPL, sticking the number after the name is a great idea: our library is so special-purpose that coexistence on one system of multiple incompatible versions is quite unlikely. In the unlikely case this proves to be necessary we will see what to do: e.g., if we have many users depending on PPL 2.45 at the time when we release a backward-incompatible PPL 3.0, we will generate a `libppl2' or `ppl2'.
I guess that, with the proposal of naming the package `libppl' instead of `ppl', goes the suggestion that programs like `ppl_lcdd' should not go in that package. The question is now how many packages should we have. Another issue concerns documentation: should it go in the base package, in the `ppl-devel' package, or in a `ppl-doc' package? Should static libraries go to the devel package rather than the base one? Should we provide versions enabled for profiling? By the way: it seems that in Debian development packages use "dev" instead of "devel". Is this correct?
I would encourage you to look at %files `ppl.spec.in' in CVS head and come up with proposals on how to package the PPL both on RedHat and on Debian. If you feel you are qualified only on one of these packaging systems, please feel free to disregard the other one (even though at the end I would like to enforce some sort of consistency between the two). All the best,
Roberto