[arch-general] pacman's "Depends On"

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Thu, 23 Apr 2015 21:01:21 +0200, Aaron Caffrey wrote:
>Maybe you should specify which packages to be ignored via 'IgnorePkg'

Hi Aaron,

the problem is that a user first needs to test which software depends
on a dedicated version of a dependency and wich version doesn't.

$ pacman -Qi libvpx | grep By
Required By    : ffmpeg  ffmpeg-compat  firefox  [snip]  tor-browser-en
[snip]

ffmpeg and ffmpeg-compat mention that they need a dedicated version of
libvpx, while firefox doesn't. tor-browser-en still works with the old
version, haven't tested it with the new version, since it's a package
from AUR, it might need the old version and needs to be rebuild, when
using the new version. IOW my request is related to the way
dependencies are listed.

I'm already using IgnorePkg, I will use it for Firefox too, but 1. I
wasn't aware that Firefox depends to a dedicated version of libvpx and
2. I will build some software from ABS, especially Internet related
software.

Btw.

"it is simply to much of a hassle, to keep track of every versioned
dependency" - G. Schlisio

That's reasonable.

Resume:

You only can add a package to the IgnorePkg list, if you are aware that
you need to prevent it from getting updated.

The funny thing is, that I noticed a broken Virtualbox after upgrading
systemd. Instead of checking what packages are needed by virtualbox, I
suspected systemd to be the culprit. A pacman -Qi virtualbox would have
shown me, that the culprit was an update I did a few hours before. IOW
I was very stupid. However, assumed virtualbox would have mentioned
that it depends on a dedicated version of libvpx, pacman would have
forbidden the update.

Schlisio's argument that it's much work is reasonable.

Regards,
Ralf