Bill Nottingham <notting@splat.cc> wrote on Tue, 6 Jan 2015 11:39:27 -0500:
<...>
- Even searching for -devel packages implies a "target == host" build
  sensibility that is relevant mostly to those developing Fedora, and
  not to most of those developers that I run into on a day-to-day basis
  (and likely not the developers we're targeting.) They're interested
  in using mock along with system libraries for RHEL/CentOS, using
  pip/npm/rubygems, etc. 
So you mean that Fedora target developers are either using dynamic languages, or they develop native software for RHEL/CentOS?! So you believe that "target == rhel/centos"? And native software developers for *modern* distros are not targets? This is really offending. RHEL/CentOS themselves should mainly target their developers. I guess that most of the developers you run into are working for RedHat.

Notice that -devel packages are not useful only for developing Fedora. I work in a company in which everyone else is using Ubuntu, and that is their target OS for their software. However, I use Fedora and its -devel packages (unless they doesn't exist or too old), but my code compiles fine on their Ubuntu too. And it should compile on any other distro which have packages with comparable versions.  So, Fedora -devel packages are useful for developing software for any modern distro, but you want to target specific distributions?!

Regards,
Hedayat