[pacman-dev] Option Depency Ideas

[Nagy Gabor]

> * When a package is installed with optional dependencies, we can do a 
>   couple different things.
>     o Ask the user right there with the "Install package foo for xyz 
>       support?"
Note: too many questions with the current front-end.
[So if foo is installed, that should be automatically updated by default.]
>     o Ask the user to explicitly install the optional deps themselves (I 
>       don't think this is good at all.  This wouldn't keep them listed as 
>       "installed as a dependency" and we could just have echo statements in 
>       the .install then.)
I think, install reason should be optdepend.
But the current %REASON% handling is still buggy...:
http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/pacman-dev/2007-September/009271.html
>     o Check for some kind of /etc/pacman.conf var that lists what packages
>       users don't mind having as optional dependencies, otherwise ask them 
>       to install them.
Only GUI front-end helps here IMHO (the same for groups)

> * When an optional dependency is installed through one of the 3 ways listed 
>   above, we need to install it as a dependency, and add it to %DEPENDS%, 
>   leave it in %OPTDEPENDS%, and not put it in %REQUIREDBY%
NO. This would break %DEPENDS% -- %REQUIREDBY% relationship.
I suggest %OPTREQUIREDBY% for %OPTDEPENDS%.
> * When an optional dependency is uninstalled that was only ever installed 
>   as a dependency, we can do several things.
>     o We warn the user that they are losing functionality, and remove it 
>       from the %DEPENDS% array in the parent.
>     o We let pacman handle it like it does dependcies, this is what we get 
>       when we add the optional dependency to just %DEPENDS% and not 
>       %REQUIREDBY%
See above.

Bye, ngaba


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