[pacman-dev] "explicit dependencies", a compromise between explicit and deps

[Loui]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 01:25:38PM +0200, Dieter Plaetinck wrote:
> - in a backup/restore or clone system scenario the usual approach is to  
> do 'pacman -Qe' to get a package list.  When restoring/installing the  
> list on another box this means we install only the explicit packages and  
> their dependencies.  Some packages we installed ourself --asdeps will  
> get lost.  This is not always good.  A current workaround would be to  
> install these packages explicitly, but doesn't always feel right either  
> because we don't want the package explictly, although we do want them  
> because they provide features to a package even though it's not really  
> needed.  In fact, this is very similar to the 'recommends' directive in  
> debian package.  Many arch packages literally say 'install x to have  
> feature foo, install y to have feature bar' (these are the 'recommended'  
> packages).  If the user then installs x or y they are not really  
> explicit packages (because we only want them because we use another  
> package that recommends them), but they are not dependencies either  
> (otherwise they will get lost)

What you should do is install those packages explicitly and they should
be registered as explicit packages but also show up as dependencies.