Re: [gentoo-dev] more precise dependencies

[Paul de Vrieze]

On Thursday 19 September 2002 15:18, Yannick Koehler wrote:
> Is there plan to based the dependencies of portage on the real files
> required instead of other packages required?  At the current time I use the
> fake package installed option but was wondering if such enhancement was
> planned inside gentoo portage.
>
> ex: I install my software by hand without using gentoo it created a
> libtest.so and is inside the /usr/lib, then I merge a package which require
> libtest.so now I could set a dependency on a package containing the
> libtest.so but I'd like not to install or re-install that lib.  Today I say
> that the package containing the libtest.so is install even if it is not
> from gentoo point of view but it would be nice that Gentoo Portage figure
> it out by itself.  Also if the libtest.so wasn't to be found, then Gentoo
> Portage would have a way to figure out which package will generate such
> libtest.so needed.
>
> I kind of understand that doing this trick require a lot more information
> about dependency both compile and runtime inside the ebuild files and
> therefore I think that adding this feature would also require tools to
> figure out compile/runtime dependencies.  Probably the configure and
> makefile are containing most of that information already and could be
> extracted from there.
>
> It's not a P1 feature, more likely a very low priority feature but I
> believe it could add even more flexibility to Portage.

To find out which "AFTER COMPILATION" which packages are necessary we could 
use the depfind tool that comes with rpm. The problem is that only works 
after compilation. What could be possible is to specify a required file, and 
to specify a package that provides this file. Libraries have 
version-dependent names, while a package might compile with different 
versions. This means this kind of dependencies has only limited use.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Junior Researcher
Mail: pauldv@××××××.nl
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net