Dependencies [was: Re: bugs, bugs, bugs!]

[Michael Schwendt]

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On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 03:41:09 +0200, Leonard den Ottolander wrote:

>  On systems lacking a complete package database to query, the explicit 
> naming of the depended on packages would solve the problem of unknown 
> dependencies. Splitting a package and moving a library to a new package 
> would possibly leave a redundant package requirement in a depending on 
> rpm, but the requirement for the library would be still available. If a 
> package maintainer did miss such a library split the redundant package 
> requirement would most probably not harm and be updated as soon as 
> spotted.
> 
>  Consistently mentioning both the required packages as well as the 
> libraries would make the rpm db system more self-contained and probably 
> solve a lot of dependency problems.

For some packages such a list of explicit requirements can get
pretty long and would require an extra maintenance effort. For
instance, not only when depending packages are renamed or when the
dependencies of a package change (user would install redundant
stuff). But also when a particular version of a library is found
only in a particular package revision. We should rely on tools which
solve the dependencies for us and which find out what package to
install to get libfoo.so.3.

>  On systems lacking a complete package database to query,

... there should be an alternative way like querying a remote
package database server.

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