[Pkg-gnutls-maint] Bug#405238: libgcrypt11-dev: Please consider switching to pkg-config or similar

[Nathanael Nerode]

Package: libgcrypt11-dev
Severity: wishlist

Currently libgcrypt11-dev ships with a "libgcrypt-config" which
causes trouble for Debian.  It spreads unnecessary 
dependencies on libgpg-error0 all the way up the dependency chain
to every package which uses it.

While this is basically a bug in each of those packages (they shouldn't
be using libgcrypt-config), it is rather tedious to fix it in all
those packages, because the fixes cannot go upstream.

If libgcrypt11-dev used pkg-config with Libs.private (or provided a
libgcrypt-config which understood shared libraries), then the other
packages could switch to using pkg-config for libgcrypt, a change
which *could* go upstream.

For background, see http://rerun.lefant.net/checklib/ .
If libgpg-error ever changes soname, there will be a world of hurt
for transitions to testing, and it's all caused by libgcrypt-config.

Thanks for considering this.