Re: [gentoo-dev] How to handle dependencies on protocol headers?

[Alec Warner]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 9:32 PM, Matt Turner <mattst88@g.o> wrote:
> Often packages depending on X11 libraries will also have to specify
> the X11 libraries' proto packages in DEPEND. This is because the X11
> library itself #includes files provided by the proto package. It's not
> really that the X11 library depends on this at run-time, so the
> protocol packages aren't specified in the RDEPEND of the libraries.
>
> This is documented in a number of bug reports (see 379545), and it
> seems that the decision is between
>  - add proto package to dependency list of packages using X11 libs
>  - add proto package to rdepend list of the relevant library itself
>
> The first is more correct, I think, but it's also much more annoying.
> Mesa winds up having x11-proto/inputproto in DEPEND for some long
> forgotten reason, for instance.

Why is it annoying?

-A

>
> The second option is much simpler and less error prone, but removes
> the ability to depclean the proto packages.
>
> It seems that some sort of DEPEND variable that means "I only need
> this when other packages are building against me" would be useful.
> Thoughts?
>
> Matt
>
>