On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 13:09:40 +0900 Jason Stubbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: | On Saturday 24 February 2007 12:34, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: | > On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 12:27:35 +0900 Jason Stubbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | > wrote: | > | For the 14 cases you mentioned that were making a mistake, they | > | probably can be rewritten so as to force an install of the first | > | matching package, but when that isn't what is wanted it becomes a | > | bit of a headache. | > | > That should *always* be what's wanted. Packages should only alter | > dependencies / build parameters based upon USE flags, not based upon | > what else happens to be installed. | | Okay, I must be missing something here. If package foo can work with | either bar or baz equily as well but not both, why should it force an | artificial preference?
For consistency. Installing a package with identical USE flags should give the same result on all systems. | Also, if packages should not specify dependencies based on what is | installed, the semantics of || ( ) would need to be changed such that | the first non-masked packages is always installed. No, || ( ) has legitimate use for switchable dependencies. For example, if a package can use either curl or wget, and it can switch at runtime, RDEPEND="|| ( curl wget )" is fine. Similarly, if a package needs either tetex or ptex at compile time, DEPEND="|| ( tetex ptex )" is correct. | The only reason I can see for the above is to be able to have | non-broken binary packages. However, that can be addressed by | replacing *DEPEND in binary packages with their resolved forms. If it affects binaries, it needs to be a USE flag. -- Ciaran McCreesh Mail : ciaranm at ciaranm.org Web : http://ciaranm.org/ Paludis, the secure package manager : http://paludis.pioto.org/
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