Comment 29 for bug 74647

> And why not create two php packages? "php5-standard" compiled without any special options and "php5-extra" (compiled with gd and perhaps other stuff).

Bundled GD library in php has hardcoded dependency on php, which just adds to reasons, why it couldn't be packaged as a standalone library.

What we really need is a proper fork of libgd with active upstream.

The situation is that we have "official" libgd which had last release in 2007, and bundled "libgd" in php, which doesn't have proper versioning, proper soname, and basically it's useless for everybody except PHP project.

So unless proper fork with (at least) backwards API (not ABI) compatibility is made, it's almost useless to ask.