Lintian tag: development-package-ships-elf-binary-in-path

Type: information

Description (from lintian-explain-tags)

This development package (ie. from the libdevel section of the archive)
installs an ELF binary within $PATH.

Commonly, executables in development packages provide values that are
relevant for using the library. Source packages that use such development
packages tend to execute those executables to discover how to use the
library.

When performing a cross build, host architecture binaries are generally
not executable. However, development packages need to be installed on the
host architecture so such files are useless.

An alternative approach is to use pkg-config(1) or potentially splitting
architecture-independent development tools into a separate package that
can be marked Multi-Arch: foreign.

Please refer to Bug#794295 and Bug#794103 for details.

Visibility: info
Show-Always: no
Check: binaries/location
This tag is experimental.

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