Bug#332753: xlibmesa-gl-dev: cannot link OpenGL app: /usr/bin/ld: cannot find, -lGL

[Sven Joachim <sven_joachim@web.de>]

Do you have nvidia-glx installed?  That package diverts some files in
the xlibmesa-gl package, which leads to the dangling symlink
/usr/lib/libGL.so.  Here's what "dpkg -L xlibmesa-gl" prints for me:

/.
/usr
/usr/X11R6
/usr/X11R6/lib
/usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1.2
diverted by nvidia-glx to: /usr/X11R6/lib/nvidia/libGL.so.1.2.xlibmesa
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/xlibmesa-gl
/usr/share/doc/xlibmesa-gl/copyright
/usr/share/doc/xlibmesa-gl/NEWS.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/xlibmesa-gl/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/lib
/usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1
diverted by nvidia-glx to: /usr/X11R6/lib/nvidia/libGL.so.1.xlibmesa
/usr/lib/libGL.so.1
diverted by nvidia-glx to: /usr/lib/nvidia/libGL.so.1.xlibmesa
/usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2
diverted by nvidia-glx to: /usr/lib/nvidia/libGL.so.1.2.xlibmesa

And nvidia-glx does not contain the file /usr/lib/libGL.so.1.2, so the
symlink /usr/lib/libGL.so in the xlibmesa-gl-dev package points
nowhere. :-(

This issue is long known, see http://bugs.debian.org/208198 for
details.  It became finally fixed in version 1.0.7667-2 of nvidia-glx,
which is in experimental.