Inflation of explicit build requirements

[Leonard den Ottolander]

Hi Michael,

> > > + patchutils?
> 
> Do you know of any src.rpm which buildrequires this?

ghostscript. But indeed just a single package. Can probably best remain
a specific requirement.

> > zip?
> 
> Same here. There are a few src.rpms which need 'unzip' for uncompressing
> source archives. But if any needs zip, that would be rare enough to let
> the packager "Buildrequires: zip".

I thought I noticed a package requiring zip while building some of the
base packages for RHEL 3, but I can't find a(n implicit) reference to it
in any spec file now...

> > automake* ? autoconf* ?
> 
> Without the '*' I would agree.
> 
> > readline &/ -devel?
> 
> readline-devel is not needed often enough either. Even in Core,
> 'rpm --redhatrequires libreadline.so.4' doesn't print many packages.
> 
> > byacc?
> > bison?
> 
> Either one at most, so it would be well-defined whether a program
> uses 'bison -y' or yacc.
> 
> > pkgconfig?
> 
> Should be moved up higher to the root of a dependency chain. That means,
> foo-devel should "Require: pkgconfig" already when it places header files
> and libraries in custom directories and provides pkgconfig template files.
> 
> > m4?
> 
> Should be implicit with aclocal, automake and friends.

Yes, it is a requirement of autoconf.

> > binutils?
> 
> Dependency of gcc.

Yup.

> > symlinks?
> 
> Much more and end-user tool -- and if used at all in src.rpms, a suitable
> candidate for explicit buildrequires.
> 
> > flex?
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > Can't think of any more
> > > right now :) .
> > 
> > + libtool of course!
> 
> Maybe. (It requires libtool-libs and hence provides GNU ltdl.)

That leaves autoconf, automake, byacc/bison and libtool (maybe). What
about the idea to make these (plus the packages you mentioned) an
explicit requirement for rpm-build?

Leonard.

-- 
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