Hi, Jan de Groot wrote:
For the base/base-devel discussion: when building packages, base-devel and base should be installed. Looking at debian-alike distributions, I don't see packages makedepending on g++ either when c++ code needs to be compiled.
The gcc dependency within base-devel would cover the use of g++. Perhaps I "muddied" the waters by suggesting that a user could choose to not install gawk. Maybe the real question is: What is the purpose of base-devel? 1) To specify the standalone packages required to build base packages or 2) To specify a recommended set of packages required for package building in general If the answer is (1) and something in base requires gawk to build then I suggest gawk should be a dependency of base-devel. If the answer is (2) then I guess I can live with the implied requirement that gawk is installed as part of base _always_. I suppose I'm being a bit pedantic here but, from my engineering background, I don't really like assumptions and would prefer explicit requirement. I don't have the exact quote to hand but it has been said that "90% of programming errors arise from false assumptions". I guess that's why formal design methodologies evolved - but that's another story ;-) Regards, Neil Darlow