Can *-dev.ipk packages be installed into a Yocto "standard SDK" sysroot on build host machine?

Question

I'm about to start porting an embedded linux application targeting hardware running a 4-5 year old Yocto generated linux image (4.19 kernel) to a new platform provided by the same hardware vendor. The vendor has indicated that their new Yocto linux image is including OPKG package support and that going forward extra/non-standard system software will generally be provided via. packages, rather than custom OS images.

I do not yet have the new hardware or their Yocto image source files/recipes etc. however I do have the SDK for the new hardware (with the prev. generation hardware I've only worked with the SDK, I never had reason to set up the Yocto build system for it). It is a Yocto "standard SDK" (rather than an Extensible SDK).

From my skim reading of the Yocto documentation and search through mailing list archives etc. I can't figure out if there's any supported way of installing package families that include a "*-dev" component (header and library files needed during build process) into a Standard SDK install on a host build machine.

I did play around with a sample package: manually disassembling it (ar -x ) and hand copying the contained files to where I thought they needed to be in the SDK install sysroot, and after a bit of wrestling got some dependent application code to build OK, but it was very messy, and I don't have any confidence that it would be feasible with a larger more complicated package.

Examining the contents and metadata of the *-dev.ipk package I got the strong impression it was intended for installation on the target hardware, rather than the cross-compiling build host.

I did also notice that the SDK install did include a copy of the opkg package management application at [SDK install root]/sysroots/x86-64-linux/usr/bin/opkg ...

Is there a proper/non-hacky way of doing what I'm describing here, without moving to an "extensible SDK"?