Bug#687001: ITP: optional-dev -- fake (empty) dev package

[Dmitry Smirnov <onlyjob@member.fsf.org>]

On Sun, 9 Sep 2012 00:30:41 brian m. carlson wrote:
> Debian users depend on the package being built in a consistent way.  For
> example, some packages are built with Kerberos support.  While this is
> generally optional for most packages, I'd be very upset if, say, the
> Debian openssh-server package suddenly lost support for Kerberos because
> the maintainer or someone doing an NMU didn't have the appropriate -dev
> package installed, since it would mean that package would suddenly fail
> to work in a major way for me.  Your proposed solution would remove an
> important safety check.

Thanks for your brilliant explanation of problem.
You're certainly right but your example is also a case of possible abuse of an 
idea because you describe Kerberos as important feature which shouldn't be 
optional.