Slapd headers are no longer packaged in Debian.
We are hitting again the bug #192163 since there is no more
libslapd2-dev.
Could you please get the headers back (slap.h, portable.h, etc...) in order to package properly slapd related tools ?

Thanks in advance

up
I miss them too. I develop a slapd plugin. We use slap.h and portable.h
and it seems that there no other way to do.

Regards,

Hi,
I’m currently dealing with an OpenLDAP password checker,
which builds as an external module.
It currently needs two include files, portable.h and slap.h,
which are not shipped by any package.

It is my understanding that those file were once provided by
a libslapd2.3-dev package, which doesn’t exist anymore. However,
git history[0] didn’t tell me the reason behind its removal,
and a bug is currently open to have it back (#650501).

Somebody who is more knowledgeable about this, can please tell me:
 * why was it removed?
 * can we start providing again those headers? looking at the bug,
   there are several people needing it.
 * should a separate libslapd2-dev be reintroduced, or can they be
   shipped in private subdirectories of libldap2-dev?
 * is portable.h really a private header? From a quick glance, it
   looks like a global header inside include/, but I noticed that
   several files from there are not installed.

[0] http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-openldap/openldap.git/commit/debian/control?id=7a9ad38eac2a4aec87dc8b61bfec56fcd43ff9a7

Cheers, Luca

Hello Luca,

First, I'll note that it was never in a stable release. It was added
and then dropped again during sarge development.

Some of the history is in deleted svn branches and not included in the
git import. After the openldap2/openldap2.2 split, libldap2.2-dev and
libslapd2.2-dev were dropped "until post-sarge":

http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/pkg-openldap?view=revision&revision=388
http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/pkg-openldap?view=revision&revision=389

(I don't have all the context, but I think the reason for the split
was that the GnuTLS never really worked well with 2.2 or 2.3, while
slapd 2.1 was buggy and no longer supported upstream.)

Shortly after the commit you quoted, around the time of importing 2.3,
Matthijs noted that reintroducing the -dev packages still had to be
delayed:

http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-openldap/openldap.git/commit/?id=f83935ddfb02df611c65a40d5057145fb09259e4

In the excitement of the 2.4 update and long-awaited source merge,
libslapd2.3-dev appears to have been simply dropped:

http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-openldap/openldap.git/commit/?id=3bff96fbaf398ca668449ab34b7679152c3784ec
http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-openldap/openldap.git/commit/?id=a834d5bbc916e8318a5c8a86ec81e9a2a0da3e3d
http://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-openldap/openldap.git/commit/?id=4293383b1aea21ab27e3955f3edee03f2a55e96e

Based on that, I don't see a reason why libslapd-dev couldn't be enabled again.

I don't think I know enough to answer your other questions. That said,
if the slapd headers could be reintroduced, I'd be interested in
trying to package the LTB ppolicy checker.

Update since this came up again in IRC:

slapd.h, portable.h, and other generated headers such as config.h are
"private and subject to change without notice" [ITS#7283]. IMO that
makes them unsuitable for shipping in a Debian package unless we somehow
arrange for external builds to have strict dependencies the exact build
of openldap that provided the header.

The requests for a more public interface for slapd plugins have been
noted in the past, and raised again now as [ITS#8982].

[ITS#7283] http://www.openldap.org/its/?findid=7283
[ITS#8982] http://www.openldap.org/its/?findid=8982