packaging a static library

[Daniel Drake]

Hi,

OLPC's security system uses libtomcrypt / tomsfastmath, both at the
Linux level and the firmware level.

OLPC has previously had a specific version of tomcrypt/tommath
profesionally audited for security reasons. So we obviously want to
stick with that version.

A few packages we have in Fedora currently use this frozen, audited
version - we do so by shipping duplicate copies of that source code
within the individual packages, rather than linking against the dynamic
systemwide equivalents.

As we're now looking at making another package which uses yet another
duplicate copy of this code base I'm wondering if we can do it better.

Could I add a package, named olpc-bios-crypto-devel (a subpackage of the
to-be-packaged olpc-bios-crypto), which installs the .a files for the
audited libraries somewhere on the system?

Then the individual components that rely on this library (e.g. bitfrost,
olpc-contents, olpc-bios-crypto) would have a BuildRequires dependency
on olpc-bios-crypto-devel and build against the 'systemwide' static .a
library files.

Or am I going too far against common packaging practice at this point?
Any alternative suggestions?

Thanks,
Daniel