[TriLUG] Dependencies: Lasagna or Spaghetti?

Jason Tower jason at cerient.net
Thu Nov 9 11:21:20 EST 2006


oh i agree 100%.  just pointing out that it *might* not be a gnome issue at 
all, but rather a rpm gaffe (the link mentioned yast, which means suse, 
which means rpm).

consider this: aptitude on ubuntu (and debian too i assume) has a 
-R/--without-recommends option which can often reduce the number of 
dependencies that need to be met during package installation.  obviously 
this is by design but it shows that package dependencies are not 
black-and-white and depend at least to some extent on the package maintainer.

jason

Tanner Lovelace wrote:
> I wasn't sure if it was RPMs or .debs but if it's RPMs they have
> automatic dependency calculations (and the user can specify
> dependencies too, but they really should use the automatic
> stuff as much as possible).  But either way, that's just really
> bad.  Why should any package depend on the docs package?
> 
> But, for the case of applications depending upon other applications
> instead of just depending upon libraries or frameworks, is it
> the case with gnome that that is the case or is that also a case
> of bad packaging?  I know Unix, historically, does tend to do that,
> but I would think that would be less prevalent with desktop applications.
> 
> Cheers,
> Tanner
> 
> On 11/9/06, Jason Tower <jason at cerient.net> wrote:
>> aren't dependencies as much a function of who did the packaging as of the
>> software itself?  meaning, this isn't necessarily a gnome issue, maybe
>> someone used less than optimal packaging techniques when rolling the 
>> rpms.
>>
>> jason
>>
>> Tanner Lovelace wrote:
>> > I hear lots of people talk about how various desktop environment
>> > are bloated, but this particular story just amazes me!
>> >
>> > http://duncan.mac-vicar.com/blog/archives/145
>> >
>> > Can anyone who is more knowledgeable about Gnome shed
>> > some light as to why the dependencies described in that
>> > blog post seem to be so messed up?
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> > Tanner
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> 
> 



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