On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 4:43 PM, John <[email protected]> wrote: > > Have noticed that some packages require virtual packages to installed > as well. For example when installing dev-db/mysql, virtual/mysql is > installed as well. > > What are the purposes of these "virtual" packages??
I think it is usually when there are alternatives available which can fit the dependency. For example, you could use MySQL or MariaDB to satisfy virtual/mysql dependency. That way the alternatives can be defined once in the virtual package, rather than in every single package that uses MySQL.
