On Sunday 29 August 2004 22:41, gadgeteer@elegantinnovations.org wrote:
On Sun, Aug 29, 2004 at 09:27:10PM +0200, Maarten (fulldisc@ultratux.org)
wrote:
On Sunday 29 August 2004 00:04, gadgeteer@elegantinnovations.org wrote:
On Sat, Aug 28, 2004 at 10:23:36PM +0200, Maarten
(fulldisc@ultratux.org)
wrote:
I remember well that at one time I wanted to install a SuSE system
without X, and just one package triggered 4 other packages and those
then triggered the full X eventually. It really was a pain. Mind
you, that was a few years back, I get the distinct impression things
have changed for the better now.
I've not used yast but with rpm at least you can pass a flag to ignore
dependencies.
Yes. But that's hardly the point, is it. You can remove the unwanted
packages using 'rpm -e --nodeps' too, but you shouldn't need to.
Why not? If someone were installing X and failed to install one of
those packages triggered by the dependencies in your example above then
their installation would be broken.
IF you're installing X then my example doesn't apply. My example applied to a
scenario where one definitely _doesn't_ want X (on a server perhaps) and it
gets installed despite, due to some obscure dependency.
Then you are tasked to remove all of X (and it's a lot) by rpm -e --nodeps.
That is a big job... especially since you're not absolutely sure which
packages belong to or depend on X and which do not.
If the 'one package' were compiled to use shared libs from X it would be
broken if you do not install those libs. Usage without X may or may not
induce it to actaully break but there is code in there that if executed
expects to find those shared libs.
There is the possibility (AFAIK) to name a dependency "Optional". That would
be a better choice in the example(s) at hand. SuSE's Yast doesn't have X as
dependency since it can work without it, albeit it is looking nicer in X.
More packages should follow that. If a package offers a ncurses mode, IMHO it
should not depend on X (or kdelibs, or glib, or gnome-lib, etc.(*))
(*) well except if it's real base functionality depends on those.
But as I said, things already are (much) better now as they were a couple of
years back...
The correct thing would have to be re-compile that package to not depend
on any of the packages not installed.
Hum, I don't fully agree but splitting up the package would be a good thing,
akin to emacs / xemacs, thereby elegantly solving the problem.
Maarten
--
Yes of course I'm sure it's the red cable. I guarante[^%!/+)F#0c|'NO CARRIER
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