[pacman-dev] Doing more stuff with optdepends

[Dieter Plaetinck]

On Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:15:10 +1000
Allan McRae <allan at archlinux.org> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have been thinking about optdepends and if we can improve the
> handling of them.  So, given I am better at making wiki pages than
> patches...
> 
> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/User:Allan/Pacman_OptDepends
> 
> What do people think about this idea?  Are there other sensible 
> additions to that proposal?
> 
> I know that optdepends were originally for getting rid of
> informational messages but I have some packages on my system that are
> installed "explicitly" when they are really (opt)deps for other
> packages.
> 
> Allan
> 
> 
> 
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Some good suggestions.


1) Re: "optdepends are not orphans unless a flag is specified".

Maybe you could also just show the listing of all
"orphans" (including optdeps) and next to it add something like
"(optdep for package foo, bar)" where appropriate.

2) I would really like a way to just "list all installed optdeps". that
way. if you want to "clone" all installed packages to another system,
you just need the list of installed packages and a list of the optdeps.
(if you like the idea from the previous point, I can use that and just
grep on optdep and I'm happy).  Or maybe even one list of all explicit
packages, with next to them their installed optdeps.

3)Re: "optdepends can be removed with -Rs"
isn't this just the consequence of optdeps being installed with --asdep?


Dieter