On 10/10/06, Austin Ziegler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I think that this had been discussed before: is it possible to
consider the idea of weak dependencies now? Basically, something where
I could mark Text::Format of making use of TeX::Hyphen or Text::Hyphen
but not requiring either.

There's at least one other case that I can think of where this would be useful.


I'd like to see this too.  There are cases where  optional dependencies improve an experience but aren't required.  An example I can think of is RIch's semitar library, which uses a C extension if the extension exists and falls back on a pure Ruby version if not.  I would think we could easily add an attribute to dependencies that would be specified like this:

s.add_dependency("fastercsv", [">= 0.1.0"], :optional => true)

I'm not sure yet how I'd want to see the installer behave if there's an optional dependency.  Prompt by default?  Warn but not prompt?

Chad




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