Bug#656848: libav-dev package?

[Reinhard Tartler]

tag 656848 wontfix
stop


On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 11:00 AM, Harald Dunkel <harri at afaics.de> wrote:
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> Package: libav
> Version: 4:0.8~beta2-3
> Severity: wishlist
>
> Would you mind to provide a meta package libav-dev requesting
> all the other libav development packages in the same version?
> This could make writing package build dependencies much easier.

I don't think this would be a great idea. As application maintainer,
you should know the requirements of your package, and knowing the
libraries it uses is one part of them.

To be more specific, during my last archive rebuilds, the exact build
dependencies gave me a clue what part of libav a package is using,
which was helpful for classifying libav's reverse dependencies. This
wouldn't be possible at all if all application packages started to
build-depend on some libav-dev package.

On a related note, your request is similar to the idea of merging all
libav* libraries to a unified libav.so shared object. This would lead
to even more frequent SONAME bumps, which would have benefits and
drawbacks. I think this is best discussed upstream.

-- 
regards,
    Reinhard