[pacman-dev] support of optional dependencies

[Roman Kyrylych]

2007/9/22, Aaron Griffin <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com>:
> On 9/21/07, Pierre Schmitz <pierre at archlinux.de> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > while working on php I realized that I really need something
> > like "optionaldepends" in a PKGBUILD. I am not sure about the current status
> > of this; the last time it was decided that we print some message to the user
> > using the install scripts.
> >
> > But I am not very happy with that kind of workaround. It would be much cleaner
> > to have such support in makepkg/pacman itself. It would be enough if those
> > are just information which the user can ask for if needed. Currently you have
> > to grep through pacman.log to see those messages after you have installed a
> > package.
> >
> > It could be implemented the following way:
> > PKGBUILD
> >         optionaldepends=('package':'optional description why you might want to \
> >                           isntall this optional package' \
> >                          'next package')
> > makepkg
> >         treat optionaldepends like makedepends
> > pacman
> >         show optional packages and their (optional) description after install
> >         add a switch to show those information after the package is allready
> >         installed
> >
> > As an example of how "userfriendly" our current solution is see
>
> Yep, there's an FR for exactly this. I can't find the one I'm thinking
> of... but I did use the term "optdepends" - I think Roman used the
> term "suggests"
>
> Best i can find: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/6626
>

The best description I found is http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/4845#comment10357

-- 
Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)