On Fri, 21 Dec 2012 14:36:26 -0500 (EST), Ray Strode wrote:

...

Has this been introduced recently, or has it been like that always?

Looking through the history, it's been that way as long as there was a libs subpackage. I didn't do a very good job documenting adding the subpackage in the commit message either. I just snuck it into a "upgrade to latest release" message:

Date: Tue Oct 18 22:47:14 2011 -0400

Okay, that explains it. I've filed a bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/889674

It would be EasyFix, but there is an explicit dep in "gnome-shell" on "gdm-libs" (for the gi file) already, and it's not clear to me yet whether gnome-shell also wants files from "gdm" (via the indirect dep currently). That makes the -libs subpackage questionable.