On Mon, 12 Apr 1999, Mason Loring Bliss wrote:
> I just noticed that the Mosaic package now doesn't build, since it wants the
> png-1.0.2 package.

Bzzz, this was fixed 2 hours ago. :-)
The benefits of doing bulk builds... :-)


> I was wondering... Would it be feasable to have a dependency database that
> would track what packages require what other packages, so that someone up-
> grading a particular package would know right off that these other packages
> need to be updated to build with the new package? This would seem to be a
> useful tool.

Hum, right now this information is only available at runtime (i.e. after a
package is already installed).

It shouldn't be too hard to scan all DEPENDS to get a clue which packges
require another package, the question is, how does this benefit us.
How do you intend to use that database then?

The thing I've been thinking about was to add something like USE_XXX for
pkgs that are needed by "some" others, where the number of "some" is -
well, not fixed. :-) When someone upgrades a package, he bumps the version
of the DEPENDS (or BUILD_DEPENDS, ...) line in bsd.pkg.mk for the USE_XXX,
and that's it. Just like it works for perl & gtexinfo now.

This should save some headaches like the one for these popular gfx pkgs
like png, xpm, tiff, jpeg etc. just as it does for texinfo & perl already
now. There sure are others - if for nothing else, the above-mentioned
dependency-database could give some inputs here which they are. 


 - Hubert

-- 
Hubert Feyrer <hubert.feyrer@rz.uni-regensburg.de>