Re: [Helidelinux-devel] Dependency management for software packaging

[Bennett T. <be...@ra...>]

2004-03-10T16:09:53 Rolf Veen:
> Dependency information is only meaningful for a combination of
> package/version/build-recipe.

If you want to be so precise, make that
"package/version/build-recipe/build-environment"; the list of
packages that are installed on the build system influence its
dependencies, in particular when you consider optional feature
inclusion. Lots of things will depend on openssl if openssl is
installed, and won't if it's not, with ./configure automagically
deducing whether or not to attempt to include SSL support.

> That means that probably a master file with a map 'package/version
> -> dependencies' is pretty useless.

Instead of "useless", say "imperfect".

> The correct map would be 'package/version/recipe -> dependencies'.
> Ugly.

Imperfect. I plan on only worrying about dependencies that are
completely automatically generated, on associating them with built
packages, and on treating them as heuristic guidelines. If I ask to
install something, it'll be installed; if it appears to depend on
something that's not installed, I'll get a helpful comment (but no
failure of the install). If I try a build, it'll go ahead and try to
build it --- and if it succeeds, dependencies will be completely
regenerated. If the build fails, the build-dependencies will be
analyzed to try and offer helpful suggestions about possible reasons
why this build might have failed when the previous one worked.

> That means that dependencies are more a property of the build
> recipe, a prerequisite for that particular recipe:

Take the precise same recipe, and rebuild on a system with different
packages installed, and you can get different dependencies.

-Bennett