[arch-general] depends vs. optdepends

[Rashif Ray Rahman]

On 30 December 2014 at 05:58, Troy Engel <troyengel+arch at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is my opinion this is a dangerous precedent to install binaries
> from an official package that are linked to shared libraries which are
> not required to be installed. I'm wondering why Arch considers it
> acceptable to just ignore the problem (which could be solved in all 4
> cases by simply splitting the package for that binary and adding a
> proper depends).
>
> Thoughts?

Troy,

This is a hack, I agree. However, this hack has no significant
side-effects, and yet accommodates a minimalist use case. A dependency
which has significant installation/resource footprint can be made
optional if its executables or libraries are not required for the
basic functionality of the program.

As we do not subscribe to bureaucracy we see it as a pragmatic means
to an end. If it works without side-effects, and serves a purpose,
then we have no problem with it. If the users of a package think
something should not be optional, they can file a bug and vote on it.
The packager should normally honour users' wishes.


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