Quoting Jim Klimov <[email protected]>:
On 2013-01-15 07:16, David Halko wrote:
What is the reason for "-devel" packages under Linux?
Is there a need for such a thing under another OS family?
From my experience and expectations, I'd say yes these are needed.
for linux distributions which do this, those -devel packages are the
headers for a given package. since, on such distros, those -devel
packages are not installed with their "non-devel" counterparts, this
is a significant usability loss on such distributions because linux is
definitely not yet to that point and users do need to compile things,
and fairly often if forums, google, my own experience, etc, can be
trusted. beyond being user-hostile, this practice is also
exceptionally admin-hostile, where compiling things is a fairly normal
operation, yes, even on linux. to do so on such systems requires
figuring out which missing headers one needs and installing them,
which is annoying but fairly painless if it's only one thing which one
is linking against, but becomes more painful and, in some cases, more
trial and error, as dependencies increase. systems, linux and
otherwise, known to not utilize this practice include slackware, arch,
and gentoo linux, all four bsds. in illumos, there is the header
package, which is not so bad because it is one simple package. in
openindiana, non-base packages, with an example being gnutls, include
the headers.
I vote against this on grounds of its hostility.
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