Pointers, books and documentation on writing proper libraries.

Question

I know quite some rules-of thumbs, but would like to learn some (backed up) documentation on what makes a good library.

Things such as "a library should probably not have a GUI" or "Libraries have stable, welldocumented APIs" make sense, but I miss the larger picture.

Any books, online documentation or other pointers are more then welcome.

Answer 1

Take a look to this book. It's called Practical API Design and it seems exactly what you are looking for..

Answer 2

For .NET this book (Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries) is excellent.