Excessive package interdependency

Nicolas Mailhot Nicolas.Mailhot at laPoste.net
Thu Dec 18 22:18:49 UTC 2003


Le jeu 18/12/2003 à 22:56, Jeremy Katz a écrit :
> On Thu, 2003-12-18 at 15:42 -0600, Chris Adams wrote:
> > I know the "virtual package" idea has been tossed around before.  I
> > think it is a good idea; it handles this without additional software or
> > config files or anything.
> 
> No it doesn't.  Because people are now complaining that they have GNOME
> with nautilus-cd-burner -- so they end up having to remove the GNOME
> metapackage to remove nautilus-cd-burner and then they lose every
> benefit of having it.  It works just as poorly as dependencies and is
> far less fine-grained which makes it far inferior in my opinion.
> 

That's why virtual bundles should be "loose" and not mandatory links
like current package deps. They'd be used to register "areas of
interest", with the user prompted when one of the installed bundles
perimeter changed (ie you have the Gnome bundle installed - Gnome has
been expanded to include metacity-cd-burner do you want to install it ?)

This nicely handles system evolutions and existence of several usage
logics that share the same core packages. When you put your subjective
logic in rpm deps you force it on everyone, since rpm deps are mandatory
for a well-behaving system.

Cheers,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot
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