[pacman-dev] wanted: script to list uninstalled optdepends and packages that need them

[Allan McRae]

Xyne wrote:
>>> I had a thought today that a script to list package that are optdepends but
>>> not installed could be quite useful...  I have not written one, but thought
>>> it would be good for pacman-contrib if someone wanted to contribute.
>>>
>>> Example output:
>>>
>>> tk - optional for:
>>>   ruby - for Ruby/TK
>>>   python - for IDLE, pynche and modulator
>>> fakeroot - optional for:
>>>   pacman - for makepkg usage as normal user
>>>
>>> So get script writing!  Preferably in bash or perl (which the current
>>> scripts use).
>>>
>>>       
>> If we implemented one of your suggestion for optdepends handling,
>> which is to display when an optdepends is installed or not, then it
>> should be very easy to do something of this kind, just using pacman
>> -Qi and grep :)
>>     
>
> I've attached a script to list uninstalled optdepends for installed
> packages as Allan requested. I didn't spend much time on it though
> because Xavier's comment casts doubt on its usefulness. There may be a
> few bugs in it such as missed packages. I can probably improve it if
> you think it would be useful.
>
> Some caveats for the script:
> It parses the output of "pacman -Qi".
> It expects the above to be in English.
> It strips off the version specifications to simplify checks.
> It considers all packages provided by an installed package to be
> installed themselves.
>
>
> and yeah, I'm now folloing this list too
>   

Cool....   but something is slightly wrong there:

libburn - optional for:
  brasero: alternative back-end
  bzip2: alternative back-end

bzip2 probably does not have a libbrun backend :)

Allan