Bug#859013: libgirepository1.0-dev: consider separating development files for gir1.2-glib-2.0 vs. gir1.2-freedesktop

[Simon McVittie]

Package: libgirepository1.0-dev
Version: 1.50.0-1
Severity: wishlist

libgirepository1.0-dev contains files related to three topics:

* Development files for the -lgirepository-1.0 C library
* GIR XML corresponding to gir1.2-glib-2.0
  - Depends: gir1.2-glib-2.0, according to the g-i mini policy
* GIR XML corresponding to gir1.2-freedesktop
  - Depends: gir1.2-freedesktop, according to the g-i mini policy

Emmanuele Bassi points out that this means build-dependencies for an
introspected non-GUI library (e.g. libostree) will include the Cairo,
Fontconfig, X11 stacks.

If this was split up, with libgirepository1.0-dev as a transitional or
convenience package:

* libgirepository-1.0-dev (matching the -l name) or
  gobject-introspection-1.0-dev (matching the pkg-config) or
  libgirepository1.0-core-dev or something:
  - Development files for the -lgirepository-1.0 C library
  - GIR XML corresponding to gir1.2-glib-2.0
  - Depends: gir1.2-glib-2.0

* gir-freedesktop-dev or something:
  - GIR XML corresponding to gir1.2-freedesktop
  - Depends: gir1.2-freedesktop

then only GUI packages (or packages that use libdbus and dbus-glib g-i)
would need to pull in gir-freedesktop-dev.

While looking into this I noticed that gir1.2-freedesktop depends on
libcairo-gobject2 but no other shared libraries. This seems really
weird: I would expect it to either depend on all the others (libdbus,
etc.), or on no shared libraries.

    S