Re: Apache should never be a mandatory dependency

[Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%joyent.com@localhost>]

* On 2014-05-16 at 17:13 BST, David Holland wrote:

> 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.

It definitely is not something we, as a provider of binary packages,
would ever want.

-- 
Jonathan Perkin  -  Joyent, Inc.  -  www.joyent.com