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

[Hui Z. <zh...@wa...>]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 03:19:21PM +0000, Bennett Todd wrote:
> 
> 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.

One example I met is mythtv depends on QT with mysql support, which
make me can't just list qt as its dependency.
> 
> 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

I believe manual dependency is useful. If you know the build
environment and know its dependency and know the automatic approach
doesn't work right, the manual listing of its dependency is the only
way to get it installed unattended. Imaging of deploying a same
installation on hundreds of workstations.

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

We just need train the program to be more intelligent. I believe that
any work that human find tedious or trivia should be delegate to
computer. 

-Hui