On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 19:01:16 -0600, Doug Newgard wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 18:39:55 -0600 Troy Engel <troyengel+arch@gmail.com> wrote:
Nor did I ever claim it was (and what are you even arguing here?) -- I was careful to mention the packaging tools (RPM/DEB) as both of these infrastructures underpin many distros. In both of these systems there is automatic library dependency tracking/inclusion as part of the process; if a binary is in a package and has a shared library dependency, it's implicitly pulled in as a need to install (if not explicitly defined). As far as I am able to tell, Pacman has no such capability so everything must be done manually.
-te
Yes, pacman is a much simpler package manager, but that has nothing to do with Arch's packaging practices in this case. Arch will generally keep a package together as shipped by upstream unless there's a very compelling reason to split it up. Debian is the other extreme where they split just about everything into it's own package. Simply different philosophies.
Regarding optional dependencies DEB is insane complicated. Optional dependencies are split into suggested and recommended dependencies. The way to not install or to install those different kinds of optional dependencies is handled in opposing work-flows. While I don't maintain my Debian and *buntu installs, I still help users on DEB based distros lists. I very often need to explain how to not install or to get rid of suggested and or recommended hard dependencies and how to install suggested and/or recommended dependencies. Hopefully the "tribal knowledge" how maintainers decide what becomes a suggested and what becomes a recommended dependency will be add by Troy to the Debian and Ubuntu Wikis. The editing of the Arch Wiki IMO is nonsense, just spreading FUD.