SMB libray suitable for use in non-Samba projects

[Matt Peterson]

Can anyone give me some information / background / anything on the use
of Samba code from a non-Samba application?  I was expecting to find
something as simple as a smb.h and libsmb.so that could be used like any
other utility library...  I've found the library, now I'm looking for a
header file (includes.h won't do the trick - it includes everything in
the Samba universe not just what would be needed to use libsmb).  I
believe I can make a header file that would work with libsmb code, but
before I spend time doing it, I though I'd see if anyone has a simpler
solution to the problem.

It looks like several attempts have been made to write a client
samba library, but always as a project external to Samba.  Rather
than progressing along with Samba, most of these projects have
died when the original maintainer lost interest.  No one wants 
to write to an unmaintained library.  The only way to get a 
gathering of developers large enough to ensure continued maintenance
of the library would be to make it part of Samba.

What we would be looking to contribute would be a libsamba.so,
a samba.h and online html documentation.  Caldera (and
other distros) could build 3 rpms from the samba tarball:

samba-x.x.x.rpm (current Samba stuff)
libsamba-x.x.x.rpm (libsamba.so)
libsamba-devel-x.x.x (samba.h and developer docs)

Assuming that I have not missed a viable samba library solution is 
there interest in an offer from Caldera to work on a libsamba and
what are the chances that the library would be an "official" Samba
build target? 

Please comment.

-- 
Matthew Peterson
Sr. Software Engineer
Caldera Systems, Inc
mpeterson at caldera.com