==== Packages: What? Why? How? How exactly? Why so many? ====

== What the hell IS a "package"? ==

In software development, it means a set of classes that are tightly coupled: If you change one, you have to change them all, kind of thing. Usually, the classes that cooperate in a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns|Design Pattern]] are tightly coupled, for example. Classes that deal with a particular common data type, is anothe example.

It may statistically correlate with "having a common function", but this is not necessarily so. A package may have more than one interface.

== How? ==

The Deeplayer standard is to give packages short names. The names are used,
  - For the folder that will contain the sources in a package.
  - The namespace under which the package exists.
Only the interface(s) (header file(s), of course) are in the plain namespace. Implementations exist under a namespace "priv", nested in the package namespace.

== How Exactly? ==

That which makes the classes in a package so interdependent, must therefore NOT be exposed through the interface. Otherwise the purpose of the package isn't served.

== Sounds like a pattern... ==

Unlike a pattern, which has a single function and interface, a package may have multiple functions and interfaces. The only defining characteristic of a package, is tight coupling.

== Sounds like a dll... ==

Unlike a dll, a package has no implied expectations of sharing, dynamic loading, or frequent updating. A package implies only an expectation of inter-correlated updates, whether frequent or not.

== This is hard ==

It is. I'm trying to identify packages in advance, but probably wasting my time. Package identification is supposed to be a discovery process, during development.