Re: Split Packages files based on new section "buildlibs"
Hi,
On Tue, 10 Nov 2020, at 08:28, Paul Wise wrote:
> > The current proposal is to reduce the main Packages.xz files size by
> > splitting[4] out all of the packages that are not intended for users,
> > writing those into an own file. Those packages would have a section of
> > "buildlibs", independent of their other properties.
> Should (almost?) everything in the existing libdevel section move to
> the new buildlibs section?
I wouldn’t say so.
If I install, say, libftdi-dev, I expect to be able to do actual development with it, for Debian or not. In fact, installing libftdi-dev would be the first thing I do if I were to develop with the library.
On the contrary, if I’m going to do some development with, say, clap (Rust command-line arguments parser), I wouldn’t install librust-clap-dev; more than that, if I actually did, I’d be very difficult for me to actually use it to develop an app.
Also, an important thing is that most -dev packages ship more than just source code: they usually ship or depend on binary libraries (not always, of course: C++ libraries often ship only headers). Development packages for Rust and Go usually only ship source code.
--
Cheers,
Andrej
Reply to: