On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:40 +0200, "Hussam Al-Tayeb" <ht990332@gmail.com> wrote:
The current case for many packages that use optdepends is as follows. Let's say a package called package1 installs some extra binaries or plugins. Those extra not so used binaries or plugins have extra dependencies (let's call them libsomething) marked as optdepends. so on installation pacman will say something: optional dependency: libsomething needed for package1 plugins to work.
How about instead those extra binary files or plugins are split into another package called package1-plugins and have libsomething as plain dependency? Then on package1 installation, pacman should say something like: Recommended packages: package1-plugins for blah blah functionality.
This is known as 'debian'. I think it's overkill and offers no practical benefit.