Bug#318637: Recommend that -dev documents be symlinks

[Thomas Hood <jdthood@aglu.demon.nl>]

Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.6.2.1
Severity: wishlist

Many -dev packages have copies of files that are in the runtime
library packages on which they Depend.  According to policy it
is permissible in such cases (Depends and built from same
source) to include symlinks instead of copies.  Since using
symlinks saves space, it seems appropriate to recommend that
practice.  So I propose this change:

8.5. Dependencies between the packages of the same library
----------------------------------------------------------

     Typically the development version should have an exact version
     dependency on the runtime library, to make sure that compilation
     and linking happens correctly.  The `${Source-Version}'
     substitution variable can be useful for this purpose.

+    In such cases the size of the -dev package can be reduced by
+    including symlinks to, instead of duplicates of, files in the
+    runtime library package's /usr/share/doc subdirectory.  If
+    the -dev package's /usr/share/doc subdirectory does not
+    contain files not present in the latter directory then the
+    directory itself can be a symlink.  (See section 12.3.)

--
Thomas Hood