Re: [gentoo-dev] Reminder on dependencies.

[Donnie Berkholz]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Spider (D.m.D. Lj.) wrote:
| If your package, libFoo,  installs .h files that directly require header
| files from libBar, then you have a Runtime dependency on libBar, not
| only a compile time dependency
|
|
| Why?   Because libFoo should be usable at runtime, even for compiling
| things not managed by our tree. And if   BazPack has a configure check,
| requires explicitly  libFoo,  tests for the presence of said header, and
| all checks out.. Then BazPack should be able to work,  and libFoo's
| header certainly shouldn't be broken for use in compile.

Now, the other side of the story. It's not true runtime dependence
because it's not required for programs to run, only to compile. And the
way I see it, things required for programs to compile are by definition
DEPEND rather than RDEPEND.

The consequences of the two sides are like this, from what I can see:

1) Headers are run-time and build-time deps

- - Headers have to be installed even when you're using purely binary
packages, because they are supposedly needed at "runtime" for your
packages to work.

- - Also, header packages can't be uninstalled after the build via
depclean because they're specified as run-time dependencies.

2) Headers are build-time deps only

- - Binary packages don't require the header packages.

- - Header packages can be unmerged after builds.

- - Packages requiring the headers have to DEPEND on them directly,
because DEPENDs don't cascade. (Although this brings to mind the concept
of some sort of cascadable DEPEND.)


I'd like to hear what some other people think about this.

Thanks,
Donnie
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFDXbZvXVaO67S1rtsRAr54AKDOMyoDoqBtogZu62eVV65Erv4nYACgukFK
MP1+UujlQePnkCckhseZYsw=
=HU3R
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-- 
gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list