[NEW IDEA] Automatic removal of dependencies

[Panu Matilainen]

On Thu, 27 Apr 2006, Callum Lerwick wrote:

> On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 14:05 +0930, n0dalus wrote:
>> The problem is that there's not a good way yet of giving packages
>> 'Suggests'/'Enhances' tags. At the moment all we provide are packages
>> with either 'Requires' or nothing. The idea would be that the package
>> manager would ask the user which suggests/enhances to install (with
>> suggests selected by default).
>
> Which is something Debian packages support. Meh, I've always figured RPM
> systems seem to get along okay without it, and most of all on my Debian
> systems I never find myself actually using or caring about Suggests /
> Recommends anyway, but I guess it's not a horrible idea. What would be
> nice if we're going to do it is a human friendly short %description as
> to what exactly each optional dependency enhances or adds.

Recent rpm versions support soft dependencies, eg
Requires(hint): foo
Provides(hint): bar

..and have corresponding "aliases" for spec file syntax:
Suggests: foo
Enhances: bar

Too bad it doesn't seem like we're getting a version of rpm 
supporting those anytime soon :-/

 	- Panu -