On Jan 23, 2008 3:11 PM, Aaron Griffin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Jan 23, 2008 2:00 PM, Jeff Mickey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I agree with everything eliott has said except: > > > > On Jan 23, 2008 2:32 PM, eliott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > 3. Why would someone need to search to see what owns a file that they > > > don't have on their system, with pacman? > > > > My favorite case for this is when I build something from source and > > either I don't look up or don't know the dependencies of the app. It > > spits out some linking error about some library file. Wouldn't be > > awesome if I could just pacman -So /lib/libyourmother.so.hot and it > > spit out that I was looking for extra/your-mother? This is just one > > very simple example. Not to mention it'll also help someone who has > > something that needs to be recompiled, because they can run pacman -So > > /lib/yourmother.so.hot.3 and see that it isn't in any up to date > > packages. > > > > The current scenario is me asking someone else to search on THEIR > > system for it, or searching google to find a relevant piece of > > software and then figure out of arch has that piece of software. Not > > awesome. > > > > I think this is a useful feature IF implemented as phrakture states, > > which is merely throwing around filelists that are compressed on the > > mirrors. For people who don't want to download it, they shouldn't be > > forced to. > > After talking to cactus on jabber, he pointed out the fact that the > critical phrase in that sentence is "with pacman". It appears that the > common case for looking up library names and things like that is > related to *building* packages and software, and as such, might fit > better as a supplementary tool to makepkg (or even in devtools).
For looking up library names, yes. There are other cases though - when (for example) glxgears and glxinfo moved into their own package (mesa-apps) tons of people were asking where they went. Even I didn't know for a while. There's already the uudecode example provided earlier. And which package is kde-app-X located inside? kdm? I don't know. In any case, there are valid use cases for this feature that don't necessarily include building packages.
