Re: [gentoo-dev] Difference between PDEPEND and RDEPEND?

[Jason Stubbs]

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On Sunday 04 July 2004 19:59, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Sun, 04 Jul 2004 12:50:40 +0200 Alexander Holler
>
> <holler@××××××××××.de> wrote:
> | > it's mostly used to force upgrades with related packages but to
> | > avoid circular  dependencies (which would happen with RDEPEND)
> |
> | I think you mean DEPEND, not RDEPEND. Circular dependencies using
> | RDEPEND can't occur, because RDEPEND says nothing about the order in
> | which ebuilds must be installed.
>
> No, he means RDEPEND. Currently, portage will always install RDEPEND
> before the package. This is considered by some to be a Bad Thing (TM).

It is usually not necessary to install RDEPENDs prior to a package itself, but 
it is unsafe to do it any other way until portage's dependency resolution 
advances significantly. Take the following:

foo:DEPEND="bar"
bar:RDEPEND="baz"
baz:DEPEND=""

If none of the above packages are installed, the order should be either 
baz-bar-foo or bar-baz-foo. The reason being that bar needs to be runnable 
for foo to be built and running bar requires baz. In the above example, if 
foo only had a RDEPEND on bar then the package order would be unimportant.

Marius also brought up an interesting point when I was discussing this with 
him. When a user installs a series of packages (by whatever means), they tend 
to expect that a package is executable as soon as it is installed.

Regards,
Jason Stubbs
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