On 06/16/2012 06:59 PM, Pacho Ramos wrote:
> This was noticed recently when getting:
> https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=420569
>
> Also hit this problem today while trying to bump bluez and noticed we
> are using elog messages to tell people to manually install
> net-dialup/ppp if they want ppp working with bluez.
>
> I am unsure about the disadvantages of simply using, for example, "ppp"
> USE flag to do that. One important disadvantage of current "elog message
> way" is that:
> 1. We rely in people reading the message to get package working ok.
> 2. If user emerges ppp, it will be recorded in world file and, then, if
> in the future he removes bluez, emerge --depclean want clean no longer
> needed ppp and then, people end up with a lot of packages they needed to
> manually emerge some year but that they problem no longer need at all.
>
> Thanks for your thoughts
>

why not get this finally entirely out of the way:

suggested/recommended dependencies support, like SDEPEND, 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/327701

as in, threat them as RDEPEND if user has the option to pull them in 
enabled, otherwise print an uniformed postinst message

as a bonus, this solution would also allow USE dependencies to work and 
would replace some cases of 'has_version foo/bar[use]'

- Samuli