Would anybody miss bibtool-dev?

[Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>]

I am working on taking over the bibtool package, QA-orphaned last
week. I find to my surprise that the source package builds not only a
'bibtool' package, but also 'bibtool-dev' which contains a static
library.

I question the utility of the bibtool-dev package:

 - No packages depend or build-depend on it (no recommends or suggests
   either).

 - It has only 4 popcon votes for it.
   
 - The library simply consists of every source file for the bibtool
   binary, except main.c

 - It does not appear to be designed with reusable abstractions in mind.

 - Most symbols that are exported from one .o in the library are used
   by another. Theses include "db_find", "error", "init_entries",
   "get_item", "seen", "show_version", "add_word", "new_string",
   "sbputc", "lower". No namespace conservation effort is apparent.
   Including this in any larger piece of software would be a tiptoeing
   business.

I am tempted to decide that bibtool-dev is just a waste of mirror
space and Packages.gz bandwidth.  On the other hand, it might be
considered unethical to adopt a package only to kill off one of its
.debs.

Opinions solicited.

-- 
Henning Makholm                                                  "Nett hier.
                             Aber waren Sie schon mal in Baden-Württemberg?"