On 21-Jun-98 Bjoern Labitzke spoke unto us all:
# 
# Tim Rightnour thought about the dependency of pkgs on X. I would go a step
# further: There are not only pkgs that depend on X and work fine without
# it, but there are pkgs that depend on other but would work fine without
# them. The same problems that apply to the X-case should be considered
# here. A user might not want the pkg on which "his" pkg depends or just
# can't build it. E.g. there is TCL/TK for postgresql that supports a nice
# interface to the database, but isn't really necessary. And there is e.g.
# noweb, that depends on icon. Icon is (was?) broken on several
# architectures, so noweb couldn't be build. But noweb features an
# awk-version as well as the icon-version.
# 

I agree with this.. One thing I mentioned before, but never saw anything on was
allowing an "OR" dependency.  Something like xemacs, which wants Xaw-3d.  The
user really has three options here:

Xaw-3d, Xaw, or Xaw-Xpm.  Each of which will more or less work fine..

# B would really be nice, but the developer might lack interest in
# supporting something he will never use. But I think in those cases he
# should at least _mention_ that the pkg could be extended to work with a
# certain pkg or X. Now an interested user can provide the information
# necessary to get the pkg without the "feature" working.
# 
# 
# An afterthought: Shouldn't the case be expected that using different
# feature sets for building a pkg may result in different patchs? What about
# that?
# 

The problem is.. that I can make a case for something like Xemacs.  It can be
configured like 14 different ways.  How do you let the user in on this
descision process?  Large complex packages like nethack or xemacs would require
a great deal of thought.  Perhaps the correct thing to do, is, as you say. 
Alow the developer to commit a generic pkg, then provide simple hooks in the
pkg system, that other developers can take advantage of, and extend the pkg. 
The only question in my mind is, how does the user pick which direction to take?

---
Tim Rightnour    -  root@garbled.net
http://www.zynetwc.com/~garbled/garbled.html