[arch-general] depends vs. optdepends

[Leonid Isaev]

Hi,

On Mon, Dec 29, 2014 at 07:20:42PM -0600, Troy Engel wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 29, 2014 at 6:50 PM, Daniel Micay <danielmicay at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Arch currently uses optional dependencies even when it means that
> > executables provided by the package aren't going to work with the
> > minimal set of dependencies. The packages could be split up more to
> > avoid this without pulling in more stuff, but it's not what packagers
> > usually choose to it. It's a design choice left up to the packager, not
> > a bug.
> 
> Thank you - tribal knowledge that wasn't written down as an acceptable
> standard to the Arch packaging. I have added your first sentence to a
> note (and credited you in the comment) so that it's not tribal
> anymore:
> 
>   https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PKGBUILD#optdepends

Just because something is written in a wiki doesn't make it rational....

> The reason this is complicated is anyone who comes into Arch from
> (most) other distros where this is considered a bug needs to
> understand Arch doesn't work by the same rules as all the others for
> binary shared library resolution. I disagree with the SOP, but can
> leave my opinion at the door.

Well, other distros following certain packaging guidelines doesn't imply that
Arch should follow them as well. If you subscribe e.g. to fedora-devel you'll
see how much more complicated compared to Arch the packaging process in Fedora
is (and this process is faaaar from perfect). And I am not even talking about
Debian... There is a tradeoff of complexity vs some "breakage".

So it's not about you agreeing or not with the status quo, it's about
contributing a more rational alternative than the existing PKGBUILD. In your
jasper bugreport, it would have helped if you provided a PKGBUILD with
split-packages, like jasper-base and jasper-jiv with proper "conflicts" and
"provides". At least that's what I would do...

Cheers,
-- 
Leonid Isaev
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