Inflation of explicit build requirements

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 07 Jun 2004 13:15:16 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:

> I.e. the fact that "BuildRequires: gcc" pulls in "/lib/cpp" is just an
> accident exploiting an historic artifact. If FC rsp. RH should remove
> /lib/cpp from their "cpp"-package this dependency will break.
> 
> Therefore, IMO, all packages needing /lib/cpp (There are many of them)
> should "BuildRequires: /lib/cpp".

Is it worth spending time on finding out whether a package needs /lib/cpp?
You would need to "rpm -e --nodeps cpp" or "rm -f /lib/cpp" in order to
find out.

If /lib/cpp were obsoleted, a package that buildrequires it, would break
nevertheless. So, currently we know that 'gcc' requires 'cpp', 'cpp'
contains /lib/cpp, and 'gcc' is assumed to be available on a Fedora Core
(or Red Hat Linux) system which is used for software development or
building of packages.