Dependencies [was Re: bugs, bugs, bugs!]

[Michael Schwendt]

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On Wed, 30 Jul 2003 20:22:26 +0200, Leonard den Ottolander wrote:

> > As a side-note, RPM cannot know that program X from package Y is
> > executed in script A from package B. Hence in some cases, explicitly
> > listed requirements are likely to stay.
> 
>  ? This argument I don't understand. This is what the requirements are 
> used for, but it doesn't matter whether files or packages are mentioned 
> as requirements. ALso not sure if you mean package or file names with 
> "explicitly listed arguments".

It is one of the reasons why you see a mixture of automatically
generated dependencies and manually added requirements.

> Nobody has yet explained to me why there are still packages 
> depending on packages anyway.

Because one package needs the contents or file-structure provided
by another package.

>  For now I stick to mho that also adding package names to the Requires 
> is good for clarity (educational), helps people solve many of the less 
> complicated dependency problems without having to rely on update tools, 
> and is cheap both in package size and maintainance cost.

As has been pointed out before, manually added dependencies increase the
package maintenance costs. It gets even worse when you introduce
versioned dependencies.

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