Bug#657663: libxerces-c-dev: contains *.la file with non-empty dependency_libs

[Russ Allbery]

Package: libxerces-c-dev
Version: 3.1.1-1+b2
Severity: important

libxerces-c-dev installs an *.la file with a non-empty dependency_libs
setting, which means that any clients of the library that use libtool
end up linking against all those libraries.  This creates spurious
dependencies on the ICU libraries even though the clients do not use
those libraries directly.

This is currently affecting the Shibboleth packages (xml-security-c,
xmltooling, opensaml2, and shibboleth-sp2).

I checked all the reverse dependencies of xerces-c, and none of them
appear to be shipping *.la files, which means that you should be able to
take the simple approach of just not installing the *.la file rather than
the more complex approach of stripping the contents of dependency_libs.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.1.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages libxerces-c-dev depends on:
ii  libc6-dev [libc-dev]  2.13-24
ii  libicu-dev            4.8.1.1-3
ii  libxerces-c3.1        3.1.1-1+b2

libxerces-c-dev recommends no packages.

Versions of packages libxerces-c-dev suggests:
pn  libxerces-c-doc  <none>

-- no debconf information