[Fedora-packaging] Proposal to limit file deps

[Panu Matilainen]

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> '''SHOULD''': If the package has file dependencies outside
> of /etc, /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, or /usr/sbin consider requiring the
> package which provides the file instead of the file itself.
>
> Using file dependencies outside of /etc, /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin,
> or /usr/sbin requires yum (and other depsolvers using the repomd format)
> to download and parse a large xml file looking for the dependency.
> Helping the depsolvers avoid this processing by depending on the package
> instead of the file saves our end users a lot of time.

Just FWIW, this doesn't actually help smart and apt at all, unless file 
dependencies outside what's recorded in primary.xml are outright banned in 
the repodata specification itself by refusing to add dependencies to 
other paths than what's in primary.xml. Yum is the only one of the three 
doing dependency resolution "on demand", both apt and smart precalculate 
the full dependency tree for all operations so they need all the
information at all times.

Note that I've absolutely nothing against this proposal, this helps yum 
(meaning most Fedora users) without hurting the others so nothing wrong 
with it. File dependencies are a mixed blessing...

 	- Panu -