[pacman-dev] do we need requiredby?

[Travis Willard]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 14:08:07 -0600, Aaron Griffin wrote
> On Nov 12, 2007 10:21 AM, Nagy Gabor <ngaba at bibl.u-szeged.hu> wrote:
> > So I will create a patch for killing requiredby soon. The patched pacman will be
> > compatible with the old dbs; however, old pacmans with new dbs will fail.
> > What do you say? Any contras? [my patch would simulate alpm_pkg_get_requiredby
> > with compute_requiredby]
> 
> Just to make sure I understand you - you want to fully remove
> REQUIREDBY from the DB and compute it every time.
> 
> It will be a little slower, BUT, it will help us in a few ways:
> 
> 1) we don't need REQUIREDBY all that often. It's only used in removal,
> and replace functionality if I understand correctly. The performance
> hit will not be that big in this case (removal happens far less often
> than addition).
> 2) Our package structures will shrink in size, which is always good

3) Computing requiredby every time will ensure (if the computation is done
right) that requiredby will always be correct.  Even after -Rd operations
followed by subsequent -S operations and other crazy things.  Basically, less
bookkeeping to do on install/remove.

Personal experience:
I've uninstalled (-Rd) fglrx-utils while doing testing - didn't want to also
uninstall all my libgl dependent apps as well.  Then, after reinstalling
fglrx-utils, none of my libgl apps had their requiredby reset.  

I suppose, in hindsight, I should have filed a bug when I noticed this behaviour
(bad Travis!), but I kept forgetting about the issue, and now it appears it
won't matter at all.
 
> I say go for it. Sounds like a pretty decent idea if I'm understanding
> you correctly. As usual, I await your patches 8)

--
Travis