Re: [gentoo-dev] why DEPEND and RDEPEND

[Brad Cowan]

On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 00:13, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 10:55:37PM -0500, Andrew Gaffney wrote:
> > Jon Portnoy wrote:
> > >On Wed, May 12, 2004 at 10:27:48PM -0500, Andrew Gaffney wrote:
> > >
> > >>I was wondering why there was the separation between the compile-time
> > >>depends (DEPEND) and the run-time depends (RDEPEND). Aren't all of them
> > >>needed in order to run the program? Is there a practical reason for
> > >>splitting them up?
> > >
> > >DEPEND is for *building* the package; consider binary packages.
> >
> > Yes, but run-time dependencies can be installed before the package itself.
> > I still don't see a reason for splitting them up.
> >
>
> Because you don't want to include build-time dependencies when you
> distribute the binary package.

Here's an example if you're not totally clear on what Jon is saying (
which is 100% correct BTW ). Pkgconfig is needed to build XFce, but not
needed to run it (a DEPEND, not an RDEPEND), so there is no need to
include or install pkgconfig from the GRP set as it would just take up
precious space/bloat on the cd's and the binary user's computer/HD. 
This also comes into play with reverse deps and depclean. How would you
be able to track what packages were no longer needed at runtime without
discriminating between the two? This leads to a much cleaner secure
system.
-- 
Brad Cowan <bcowan@g.o>
Developer,
Gentoo Linux    http://www.gentoo.org/~bcowan

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