Re: [gentoo-portage-dev] DB and binary dependency

[tvali]

As an addition to code deps discussion.

I didnt understand exactly, why bin deps were supposed to be better than what we have now, as i am not yet exactly sure what we have :)

Anyway, i see one basic plus of code deps. It's that you may have huge number of codelines, all containing #defines and #ifdefs. You may know that whenever it uses <?.h> header, it needs library ? -- but when you need <?.h> may be somewhat complex case. There may be, for example, 40 different .h files of your own, which include ?.h file -- and each of them may be included only if corresponding useflag is set. In such case, it's easier to describe, which package you need when <?.h> is used than to write all those if's twise in code and some other place, which make sure if you need that ? pack or not.

I havent done such thing in reality, so i dont know, how big problem it is for a programmer (how much you have that situation i described in real life), but i guess that this is the problem what binary deps were supposed to solve.

--
tvali

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