Comment 6 for bug 326899

Morten Kjeldgaard (mok0) wrote:
> I sponsored your lighttpd patch into karmic. IMHO it is definitely a
> packaging error not to include a -dev package.

This is certainly not true for most programs, so you should have
provided some reasons why a -dev package is missing for lighttpd.

So here is why this is wrong:
If another package uses this -dev package to link a 3rd party module,
it will never get the correct dependencies.

Even a small lighttpd update might break the binary API, and there
will be no so bump nor package rename as there is no library package.

Right now 3rd party modules should be patched into the upstream
sources to compile them, and distributed as one "package".
(Splitting is fine as long as you have strict dependencies)

I think providing a -dev package is possible, you probably need to:
* link the core as a library, to link plugins against
* put this library into a library package
* review changes whether they break the api and do so bumps accordingly

Imho this is not worth the effort, and I don't think anyone will
maintain such solution.
Also upstream won't support it.