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On 5/11/2011 5:43 PM, John wrote: |
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> |
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> Have noticed that some packages require virtual packages to installed |
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> as well. For example when installing dev-db/mysql, virtual/mysql is |
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> installed as well. |
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> |
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> What are the purposes of these "virtual" packages?? |
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|
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They allow other packages to depend on the presence of a |
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"service" or "feature" instead of depending on a specific |
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implementation. For example, both sys-libs/pam and |
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sys-auth/openpam satisfy "virtual/pam", since most |
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applications will work just find against either library. |
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There's about a dozen possible packages that provide |
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"virtual/bootloader". |
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It's also used to allow different architectures to have |
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different "default" implementations of the same service |
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(like virtual/libc). |
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virtual/mysql, as of v5.1, can mean dev-db/mysql or |
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dev-db/mariadb. |
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--Mike |
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