Package: libharfbuzz-dev
Version: 8.3.0-2+b1
It is customary for -dev packages to provide static archive libraries in
addition to the bare .so files for shared-library linking. The current
version of libharfbuzz-dev only provides the latter, and thus does not
allow applications to statically link the libraries.
I understand that GObject introspection requires a shared-library build,
but this functionality is often not needed. In particular, the Chromium
browser consumes harfbuzz and harfbuzz-subset, and does perfectly well
without introspection support. I recently ran into a situation on the
Ubuntu side of things where the lack of a static-linking option caused
some difficulty in supporting Chromium on 22.04/jammy:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2064821
My solution was to produce a modified harfbuzz package that provides
(only) static libraries:
https://launchpad.net/~xtradeb/+archive/ubuntu/deps/+sourcepub/16120809/+listing-archive-extra
Needless to say, it would be preferable if the official packages
supported static linking from the get-go.
