When to separate an app into sub-packages

[cd_smith@ou.edu]

Hi,

I'm not actually a Debian developer yet, but while I'm waiting on the
application to go through I may as well ask some questions that I've been
unable to find a good answer to.  I'm going to be packaging a text editor
that I wrote (lpe) which builds as an executable and a set of modules, one
per file type... eg, there's a module for editing C, and one for perl, and
one for sgml.  With no modules, lpe acts like a generic text editor, and
quite a few people just ignore the modules and use it that way.  My
question, then, is this. Should I put it all in one binary package, or
should I create an lpe and and lpe-modules package, and have lpe
(suggest/recommend) the modules package?

Right now, none of it will be too awfully big -- the total binary plus
modules are about 100K of installed space.  But while the binary will
probably remain between 40 and 50K in size, the modules will probably
become substantially larger as more modes are added.  So I thought I
should plan ahead and separate everything now.

Comments?

Chris Smith <cd_smith@ou.edu>