Re: Apache should never be a mandatory dependency

[David Holland <dholland-pkgtech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 03:53:31PM +0200, Volkmar Seifert wrote:
 > > So if some kind of web server is a soft run-time dependency, then I
 > > think it makes sense to just not include it as a dependency at all.
 > 
 > Indeed. As long as not required for building, I'd strongly suggest to
 > remove all those dependencies, be that to a web-server, or to a
 > programming-language meant to somehow run in/behind a web-server (php,
 > ruby-on-rails, etc). Though with languages, build-dependencies -are-
 > more likely, so these should be included in a way that web-servers are
 > not pulled into the build unsolicited, and may even end up as a
 > dependency when installing the packages.

I do think it's a good idea to indicate somehow that some packages
require a web server. It isn't always obvious from DESCR; also,
making such requirements implicit makes turnkey installs harder.

The standard thing we do in this kind of situation is to make
everything that requires a web server include mk/webserver.mk or
something like that (it wouldn't probably be a bl3 file) and this
figures out what webserver you're using based on config vars and
depends on that.

Not sure if that's really what we want here though.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost