file-devel should include stuff like %{_includedir}/* and %{_libdir}/lib*.so (just general Packaging Guidelines mumbo jumbo). This came up mostly because of a package of mine currently in Extras that ends up with x86_64/multilib dependency issues because libmagic.so.1.i386 doesn't live in the x86_64 (Core) repo. If file-devel existed, then it would get pulled into the multilib mix (automatically) too.
Martin, ping, I've got a package with broken deps for 30+ days in fc7 Extras repo due to this.
ping ping, now with 60+ days of silence. We may need to send someone looking for you. (:
FYI, it's Extras/gift bug #221041 that has the multilib problem due to this.
There is no file-devel package. I requested one some time ago. I close that bug as a duplicate of mine. Feel free to reopen if you find it is wrong. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 203548 ***
First of all sorry for not responding for so long :(. According to my information libmagic was not intended to be standalone library and had not stable api in the past, so I didn't want to split the package. As libmagic is quite powerful library and number of requests for spliting is growing I decided to meet this wishes. Finally I upgraded to file-4.19-1.fc7 and splited file into file, file-devel and file-libs packages. Hope this will be helpfull.