[gentoo-dev] Re: System packages in (R)DEPEND?

[Steve Long]

Peter Volkov wrote:
 Jeremy Olexa ?:
 Thomas Sachau wrote:
  Should we depend on all system packages? Should we depend on some
  packages, because they could be removed? If yes, which ones? Or should
  we leave the system packages out completly?

 https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=221311
 
 Please provide reasons/justifications for the proposal of removing
 
 Our documentation, QA team insist that we should not depend on system
 packages and there are good reasons to do that. But still above bug
 clearly states different. Also if we consider perl and some other
 packages, they also could became target to be removed... But I'm not
 going to repeat discussion we already had recently:
 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/54035
 
 So yes, there is ambiguity and the question is valid. But since we had
 discussion recently I don't see what else we can discuss now.
 
Well according to [1] it should all be done in the profiles, and [2] seems
like a good way to accomplish a more effective split. Is there anything
which means portage can't simply move ahead with that?


[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/54146
[2] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.portage.devel/2575

[gentoo-dev] Re: System packages in (R)DEPEND?

[Duncan]

Thomas Sachau [EMAIL PROTECTED] posted [EMAIL PROTECTED],
excerpted below, on  Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:04:21 +0200:

 I see packages like bison, flex, perl or sed in the system set. And i
 also see ebuilds depending on them. I also heard from Peter Volkov (pva)
 that there where discussions about removing different packages from the
 system set. So now my question is:
 
 Should we depend on all system packages? Should we depend on some
 packages, because they could be removed? If yes, which ones? Or should
 we leave the system packages out completly?

The idea has been to reduce the system set, but packages coming out of it 
will of necessity need to be widely known.

Meanwhile, in general, the system set should be reasonable to rely on in 
general.  The cases where system packages are in depends should generally 
be limited to those in which it's necessary to resolve circular 
dependencies, with the help of USE=build and boostrap, or to other 
special cases (like a dependency on a specific USE flag on a system 
package, or where not all profiles may depend on the same system 
packages, etc).

IOW, normal packages shouldn't need to specify normal dependencies on 
system packages.  At least, that's how I've read the discussion I've seen 
to date.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master.  Richard Stallman