file dependencies and packages and [blocker] bugs

[Bill Nottingham]

Hans de Goede (j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl) said: 
> Basicly: yes
> Because:
> -adding a Requires: /usr/share/fonts/foo/bar.ttf line to my package is trivial

... and causes additional megabytes to be downloaded for every transaction.

Note that actually addding these files to the repodata *breaks any dependency
solver that tries to use it.* Which is why it can't really happen.

> -games were designed with a certain look and feel, depending on getting that
>  exacy font, fontconfig is somewhat fuzzy with which font you'll get

It is? You ask for liberationsans, you get liberationsans.

> -maintaining patches against each new upstream release for dozens of packages
>  is not trivial, and that little snipped will have to be incorperated and
>  maintained seperately for each of those dozens of apps

It's like porting to PAM or NSS instead of reading /etc/passwd by hand. You want
to integrate with the system, *you use the system libraries*. It's not about
what's easiest for the maintainer.

> -you so far have failed to provide the same snippet for java and pascal
>  (real world examples), python (likely will be needed too) and
>  perl (so far an academical argument)

Not to be blunt, but if you're packaging Pascal code, you've created your
own problem. :)

Bill