Bug#656848: libav-dev package?

[Fabian Greffrath]

Am 23.01.2012 07:22, schrieb Reinhard Tartler:
> I don't think this would be a great idea. As application maintainer,
> you should know the requirements of your package, and knowing the
> libraries it uses is one part of them.

Having already considered that idea some years ago, this is exactly 
what I just wanted to answer!

> To be more specific, during my last archive rebuilds, the exact build
> dependencies gave me a clue what part of libav a package is using,
> which was helpful for classifying libav's reverse dependencies. This
> wouldn't be possible at all if all application packages started to
> build-depend on some libav-dev package.

The idea is both convenient and sloppy, but I think the latter 
overweights. To extrapolate the idea, it would be very convenient to 
have a libeverything-dev package in Debian that pulls in each and 
every -dev package available. This would vastly reduce the number of 
Build-Dependencies one has to maintain, but on the other hand make it 
nearly impossible to tell which part of which project is actually used. ;)

  - Fabian