Re: [gentoo-dev] don't rely on dynamic deps

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 11:01 AM, Ciaran McCreesh
<ciaran.mccreesh@××××××××××.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jul 2014 21:45:58 -0400
> Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
>> Just a general comment not aimed at this particular part of the thread
>> - a solution doesn't have to be perfect to be useful.
>
> Wrong. The reason everything is such a mess at the moment is precisely
> because we've accumulated so much "good enough" and "not thinking your
> cunning plan all the way through" that nothing is actually correct any
> more.

I think we might be saying the same thing in different ways.  I wasn't
suggesting that we should implement solutions that fail in random
ways, but rather that if necessary we should focus more on simpler
solutions that we can get right, but which perhaps don't cover all of
our problems.

That is, I'm more for a perfect solution for a small problem rather
than a good-enough solution (which isn't) for a big problem.

For example, perhaps there is a way to safely add an unconditional
dependency to an installed package.  That won't solve every dependency
problem, but it could be helpful.

Another way to go about things would be to try to find ways to reduce
the chance of commiting a package that has an incorrect dependency in
the first place, so that we don't have to fix so many mistakes.  Then
perhaps the extra rebuilds when there is a rare mistake might be more
forgivable.

Rich