>>>>> On Sun, 19 Jun 2011, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:

> On Sun, 19 Jun 2011 23:21:02 +0200 Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote:
>> I added a note about the possible circular RDEPEND issue.

> I still don't think we should be specifying "RDEPEND is PDEPEND if
> the package manager feels like it". That's something for the package
> mangler to provide as a horrible --ignore-dependencies-to-break-cycles
> option.

It's _not_ saying that RDEPEND is like PDEPEND in some cases. The
assertion from your previous message in this thread will always hold:

| The intention with the "usable" stuff is this that purely RDEPEND
| cycles are resolvable, but any such cycles must be resolved before
| any package which has a DEPEND upon anything in the cycle is
| resolved. So if you've got this:
|
|     first <-- rdepend --- second <-- depend --- third
|           --- rdepend -->
|
| Then (first, second, third) and (second, first, third) are the only
| legal orderings. But if either RDEPEND became a DEPEND (and if we're
| not dealing with binary packages) then there would be no legal
| ordering.

This is long-standing Portage behaviour (introduced in 2006 with the
patches attached to bug 147766, I believe).

The footnote would only clarify that in your example neither "first"
nor "second" can rely on their rdepend being available in pkg_*inst.

Ulrich