Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo gets as bad SuSE: Circular dependencies [WAS: Thank you Gentoo devs]

[Neil Bothwick]

On Wed, 16 May 2007 17:47:37 +0200, Enrico Weigelt wrote:

>>  Lots? If you'd posted this yesterday, I would have been able to recall
> > the last time I was hit with one.
>
> At least several. I didn't find an good solution for checking
> the whole tree yet, so I yet know some. Good candidates are
> where PDEPENDs occour. For example the Xserver.

As Bo has already explained, PDEPENDS cannot cause circular dependencies,
in fact they prevent them.

> > I did get a circular dependency today, sdl and directfb and guess
> > what? The error message also contained the solution, which was to
> > temporarily change a USE flag.
>
> *rofl* what a good solution. really clean. gread idea.

Yes, it is a good solution, because the circular dependency is caused by
changed USE flags in the first place. You did notice my use of the word
"temporarily", didn't you? If A depends on B and B depends on A, you
build A without support for B, then you can safely install B and A again
with the features you wanted. This is nothing to do with portage but a
consequence of building packages from different projects from source.
Naturally, you won't see this with a binary distro, because someone has
already gone through the "build A without B support, build B, build A
again" process, but without the benefit of USE flags to make it much
easier.

Having said that, portage ought to be able to handle this situation
better than it does, and work in continuing in that direction. Anal
sarcasm does not shorten the development cycle for such features.

> > The great thing about free software is that it all comes with a full
> > money back guarantee. So before you start shooting your mouth off when
> > something produced by volunteers in their own time fails to work for
> > you, stop and remember how much you paid for it and why.
>
> You don't need to give me lesson on OSS, I've did enough work OSS
> projects over last 12 years to know how it works.

Really, that comes as something of a surprise after reading your posts.

> And I'm really tired of trying to talk with learn-resistent devs who
> clearly expressed that they don't any of my help and told be to stay
> away from b.g.o. So I'm maintaining my own overlay and concentrate on
> getting things running instead of wasting time with certain devs.

"Certain devs"? Your previous batch of insults was aimed at "the Gentoo
devs". Are you becoming more selective over whom you wish to impugn?

> > Since you are clearly able to solve a problem that comes fro upstream
> > and which the combined might of SUSE and Gentoo has failed to do,
>
> Which problem from the upstream ?

Interdependency of unrelated packages.

> The problem w/ x11-base/xorg-server are the PDEPENDs on (external)
> driver packages. I dont see any valid reason for depending the
> Xserver on drivers, which themselfes depend on the Xserver.

The server does not depend on the drivers, it depends on them, it
wouldn't be much use without at least three drivers.

> IMHO, there were days where it had been done so (when PDEPEND did not
> yet exist). I don't know why this had changed, probably just to get
> an new feature widely used. (BTW: I do not see any valid reason for
> PDEPEND anyways)

Which probably says more about your understanding of how things work than
it does about their usefulness.

> In fact, I'll provide an solution. It will be published within the
> OSS-QM project. But I won't waste any second on filing any bug,
> just for that it's marked invalid by folks like Jakub.

Jakub is no longer a bug-wrangler, or a dev, he retired last month.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

New: Different color from previous model.