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

[Aaron Griffin]

On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 9:14 AM, Dieter Plaetinck <dieter at plaetinck.be> wrote:
> Maybe we should just strive for a method to create a list of those packages
> that we (might) have installed because they were interesting optdepends.
> That way, the list doesn't need to be 100% accurate. (because if we want to
> achieve that, that would be why we would make alpm more complex, and that's
> where your examples come in).  The list may contain too many packages, as
> long as no packages are forgotten.  Filtering out the list is something that
> can still be done by the user.  What if I say: never mind about the extra
> category ('explicit dependencies'), let's enhance pacman so that when it
> compiles a list of orphans, it can mark the ones that are listed by some
> other package as optdepend (and show those packages)?  That way, we don't
> make anything unnecessarily complex, but we still have a solutions for the
> problems described in the various emails.  They require some manual
> interaction, but with the right scripts and by showing the appropriate
> information where needed,  this can become a very easy task, I think.

Perhaps another -Q flag that would take optdepends into account?