On Wed, 19 Jan 2011 13:20:58 +0100 Thomas Bächler <thomas@archlinux.org> wrote:

Am 19.01.2011 08:08, schrieb Allan McRae:

...

If we want to be really pedantic about dependencies, we should list _ALL_ dependencies and not remove the ones that are dependencies of dependencies.

Why don't we just do the correct thing:

If package A depends on package B, and B depends on C, then A might depend on C explicitly because it accesses C directly. Or it might only depend on indirectly C because B accesses C. We should reflect that in dependencies (in the first case, A depends on C, in the second case it doesn't).

The result is this: Whenever the dependencies of B change (e.g., C is removed), A will still work correctly.

I'm also fan of this. The added correctness (both informational and system robustness) justifies the little overhead, imho. Dieter