file dependencies and packages and [blocker] bugs

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Mon, 2008-03-03 at 13:52 -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Hans de Goede (j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl) said: 
> > Basicly: yes
> > Because:
> > -adding a Requires: /usr/share/fonts/foo/bar.ttf line to my package is trivial
> 
> ... and causes additional megabytes to be downloaded for every transaction.
hyperbole. My view on this: the *.ttf deps un-hid a flaw in current yum
transaction handling.

> Note that actually addding these files to the repodata *breaks any dependency
> solver that tries to use it.
I don't see this. If this breaks depsolvers, these depsolvers are
broken.

> * Which is why it can't really happen.
?!?

> > -games were designed with a certain look and feel, depending on getting that
> >  exacy font, fontconfig is somewhat fuzzy with which font you'll get
> 
> It is? You ask for liberationsans, you get liberationsans.
> 
> > -maintaining patches against each new upstream release for dozens of packages
> >  is not trivial, and that little snipped will have to be incorperated and
> >  maintained seperately for each of those dozens of apps
> 
> It's like porting to PAM or NSS instead of reading /etc/passwd by hand. You want
> to integrate with the system, *you use the system libraries*. It's not about
> what's easiest for the maintainer.
It's about what the packages want, not about you want to packages to use.

Ralf