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

[Allan McRae]

Dieter Plaetinck wrote:
> Hi,
> pacman has an option --asdeps so the user can install packages as if 
> it were deps.  In fact, such packages will be treated exactly the same 
> as normal dependencies:
> <blah>
> What are your ideas?
> Thanks,
> Dieter


That explanation made my head hurt....   So to put it succinctly,  you 
want a category for packages that are sort of dependencies, but not real 
dependencies, but are not explicitly installed either.  So something you 
install because (e.g.) it is an optdepend.

I can see your point, but it does seem that adding another category of 
package is a bit extreme.  I do run into this problems as I have to 
install optdepends as explicit as I use --asdep as a mechanism to keep 
track of packages I am testing so I can just remove orphans to clean my 
system.  Maybe an option to set what packages you install something as a 
dependency of is a compromise (still not sure how that would work....).

Allan