[gentoo-dev] RFC: an eclass to handle optional runtime depends

[Michał Górny]

Hello, all.

The last discussion on new solutions optional runtime depends lead to no
agreement. Thus, I'd like to propose a solution extending the usability
of current methods of handling them.

My idea is to create an eclass which would take a optional dependency
list (e.g. through some kind of SDEPEND variable or so [being a bash
array!]) and print it out to user in pkg_postinst().

The eclass could also denote whether the particular package is
installed like I do in sys-apps/systemd [1].

But first, I'd like to ask interested devs: how many packages need more
than a single dep for a single optional feature? How would like such a
deps to be printed as?

I thought about something like:

  SDEPEND=(
    app-foo/bar "blah blah blah blah"
    app-bar/foo "fooh fooh fooh fooh"
  )

Though not sure how to handle support for many-to-one deps.

[1]:http://git.overlays.gentoo.org/gitweb/?p=dev/mgorny.git;a=blob;f=sys-apps/systemd/systemd-9999.ebuild;h=2703d8621874c3a9f961d1e0a764f88c56cdcd30;hb=HEAD#l126

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny