On Debian and Fedora experiences

[Matej Cepl]

Jesse Keating scripst:
> And how do you expect automated tools to handle these soft requirements?
> Either you always install them, or you never do, which basically brings
> up the question, whats the point?  Why do this instead of just Requires
> or not?

Well, where I am coming from we used to have tools which are not automated
but yet they are functional -- of course, this is the are of aptitude again
(or I think, there is no reason why pirut cannot do something similar).
When browsing through list of packages and installing some particular
package, it is interesting to know, that this package may be useful.
However, tell me -- who NEEDS aalib? I understand it is fun to program it
(I saw the first presentation of the library by Honza Hubička, where he
was running Doom II on console ;-)), but is there any real use for it?
However, why both mplayer and xine-lib REQUIRE it? If I am weird enough to
try it, it may be interesting to knkow that mplayer and xine-lib can use
it, but I have never personally needed to have it installed. Why should I?

And of course, if I don't care about my consumption of hard
drive/bandwidth, I could switch on in the configuration of aptitude
automatic installation of all Required/Suggested packages. But I have
never done it.

> A far better solution is to split the libraries that would use say aalib
> into a subpackage so that you can install the base package without
> needing aalib, and choose to install the subpackage that might pull in
> the aalib dep.  The OLPC project has helped to identify a lot of these
> scenarios and to split out functionality as such.

That's sure one possible solution, except that it seems to be against KISS
principle -- you get miriad new packages (mplayer-aalib, xine-lib-aalib,
etc. for any weird library there is) just to keep Requires:/Suggests:
away. May be it is better solution, I don't know, and I don't understand
this area that much as an engineer (just as an user), but it seems to me
similar to crazy things dones by Debian people just to be able to keep
everything inside Debian source package just Makefile.

Thanks for the reply,

Matěj



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