Re: [gentoo-dev] Packages that explicitly DEPEND on sys-apps/sed

[Brian Harring]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 10:08:54AM -0400, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 8:54 AM, Brian Harring <ferringb@×××××.com> wrote:
> > The implicit system set dependency thing really, really needs to die;
> > at the time of the rule, portage couldn't handle resolving graphs of
> > that sort. ?PM resolvers for gentoo are generally a fair bit saner
> > now thus doing what you're suggesting isn't really beneficial (frankly
> > it causes some issues for stages, as zac noted).
>
> ++
>
> It seems to me that the best policy would be for every package to just
> list all its dependencies, and then users are free to run the default
> experience that includes everything in @system, or a more trimmed-down
> experience.

An annoying, but valid complaint agains this is that the deps start 
getting heavy to maintain for developers, and aren't always viable to 
represent.  Unpackers for example, are a pain in the ass for current 
EAPIs- that could be reduced in pain via addition of basic implicit 
deps to EAPI5 (if a src_uri ends in .bz2, then dep on virtual/bzip2).

Or devs could just be nudged into adding the appropriate DEPEND.  
repoman checking for it either way wouldn't be hard.

The trickier point is gcc, but in my view, that's where we get the 
most gain- if the toolchain is represented in the deps it makes 
integrated cross compilation easier (keyword is integrated; crossdev 
already makes it reasonably straightforward I realize).


>  Plus, from time to time there is some debate about
> removing some package from @system and the only way to figure out what
> it breaks is a long discussion on -dev and lots of tinderbox testing,
> and then lots of ebuilds being modified to add the dependency back in.
>  With explicit dependencies it is trivial to determine.

It also improves -e behaviour; instead of the resolver being hardcoded 
to try promoting certain things (glibc and friends mainly), the 
resolver's normal logic can be used there.

> And no, I don't think that Gentoo should fully support reduced-@system
> builds, but there is no harm in making them more of a viable option.

Personally... I think gentoo should aim for it actually.  Question is 
how close we can get to it w/out overly burdening developers.

Don't suppose someone has interest in looking into this?
~brian