[pacman-dev] Optdepends (was: 3.2 "RC" release)

[Dan McGee]

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 2:12 PM, Nagy Gabor <ngaba at bibl.u-szeged.hu> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 12:14 PM, Nagy Gabor <ngaba at bibl.u-szeged.hu>
>> wrote:
>> >> One last problem : the pacman.conf needs to be updated.
>> >> Most important points :
>> >> 1) remove unstable mirror section
>> >> 2) add SyncFirst
>> >>
>> > This may be an overkill, but this can be mentioned in .INSTALL file
>> > too, because user may omit pacman.conf.pacnew. Or give a general
>> > message: "New options were added to pacman.conf, please check
>> > pacman.conf.pacnew (if it exists) and pacman.conf manual for
>> > details"
>> >
>>
>> Well I am not sure Dan would like that after what he said here :
>> http://www.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2008-July/007136.html
>>
>
> I have a completely different opinion. IMHO the current OptDepends is
> totally _useless_: who checks them with -Qi or -Si?! Personally I have
> no clue which packages have optional dependencies. I agree with Dan,
> that optdepends shouldn't be put to install file (they will be "hidden"
> after package install), but I like that they are listed.
>
> I think pacman should automatically print them during package install.
> (Here we have formatting/localisation difficulties) This behaviour
> could be disabled (to satisfy Dan ;-).

I didn't say "don't print anything", I was striking out against the
renegade install messages that continued to grow more and more
obtrusive. I'm fine with a patch that prints optdepends on package
install (and probably also on upgrade if they differ from the
previously installed version's list).

-Dan