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

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

2004-03-10T18:30:09 Rolf Veen:
> It can be done in a simple manner.
>=20
> --
> pkg postfix
>=20
> provides mta
> --
>=20
> Any name that appears in the 'provides' field is added to the list of
> installed packages, nothing more.

Slick. In my package database (/var/lib/bpm), that would just result
in creating a symlink mta -> postfix.

That is simple. I'll keep it in mind, although I still don't see the
complete drill.

That seems to be only useful for manual dependency coding, which as
I said doesn't have much interest to me (since people historically
don't do them, or get them wrong oftener than right).

If there were some way to also automate so that e.g. mutt, whose
binary will contain the string /usr/sbin/sendmail (as the default
thing to pipe mail to for outbound) will depend on mta, rather than
postfix?

Manual dependency specification is something for a different package
manager; unless I see it actually used correctly in practice, rather
than in theory, I'm not going to clutter bpm with it.

-Bennett