[pacman-dev] [PATCH] add makedepends to package and database

[Xyne]

> I'm not thinking in terms of scripting and the like, I'm thinking in
> terms of information. Like... "oh this needed mysql-libs to build, so
> maybe it has mysql support"

I don't think it would be all that useful in that case. You wouldn't
query the database to find all packages that might have mysql support.
If you were interested in that you would probably have a few apps in
mind the features of which you would like to compare. If you're trying
to determine if an app supports what you need, you would check the
website or the manpage, wouldn't you?

As pacman would have no direct use for the makedepends, I don't think
it would be worth adding them to the database. To achieve what you've
just mentioned, adding some sort of tag support would make more sense
and be far more useful. I don't actually support that idea though, but
listing the makedepends as currently suggested would effectively create
a glorified tag system with restricted input.

Perhaps another solution would be to convert the abs tree into a third
database alongside sync and local. It would be completely optional as
abs currently is but once installed  pacman (or another binary built for
that purpose) would be able to query it for such things as makedepends
in a format similar to the current sync and local queries. It would also
make it possible to seemlessly build files from source with dependency
resolution. Maintaining the database itself is not an issue as the abs
tree already exists. Distribution would require archiving each
package's PKGBUILD and local source files for distribution on the
mirrors similar to the way binary packages currently are (which would
take a load of the current abs server and be far smaller than any of the
binary repos). The database archive itself would contain files with
information extracted from PKGBUILD in the same format followed by desc
and depends files in the sync and local databases (including
information such as makedepends, optdepends, sourceURLs, etc).