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

[Xyne]

> > Apparently my "similar to the following" text in man PKGBUILD was not enough. :(
> >
> > I'd be fine with a check added to makepkg, although I never wanted to
> > get draconian about it (and I never meant for it to become
> > machine-parseable, but it seems I am in the minority there).
> >   
> 
> I know, but now they are there, it is just too tempting to leave them 
> alone... 
> 
> I added a bug report so this does not get forgotten: 
> http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/15125

Even if pacman never ends up doing something with the optdepends,
standardizing them makes the output homogeneous. More importantly it
enables others *cough* to write code to parse and handle them.
Requiring that a user specify an optdep either exactly as deps are
currently specified or followed by a colon and a reason is not
draconian. It's just sane and practical.