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

[Aaron Griffin]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 8:24 AM, Allan McRae <allan at archlinux.org> wrote:
> 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....).

This seems more like an issue with dependency resolution than anything
else. Assuming this is all based on issues with optdepends, like so:
$ pacman -S foobar
Optional dependencies for foobar:
    baz
$ pacman -S --asdep baz

What we have here is 'baz' indicated as an orphan, but what we *want*
is baz indicated as "Required By" foobar, correct?

If so, then it is just a matter of adding more logic to the optdepends
property. That is:
a) Split entries on ':', and resolve package names (warn if not found?)
b) Use optdepend packages when resolving things like orphans and
requiredby lists.

If I understand your qualm right, this would be a better way to handle this.