On Wed, 31 Dec 2003, Greg Troxel wrote:

> I disagree strongly.  It should be possible to start with no packages,
> cd someplace under pkgsrc, type 'make package' and have it build.
> With circular dependencies, one would have to support some very
> awkward operations (e.g. build one package without a feature, build
> the second package depending on first, replace first package), and
> IMHO this just doesn't make sense.
>
> I conjecture that a large number of such cases are the result of a
> package that both provides a library feature for other programs and a
> user program not being split into two packages - the library probably
> doesn't have the problematic dependencies, and it's fine for a user
> program package to depend on both libraries.

There are certain bootstrap cases where circular dependencies are largely
inevitable.

Take for instance the case when you're building with a compiler in pkgsrc.
You either have to accept that some of your packages will not be built
with the compiler of your choice (which is what we currently do), or you
have to go through the song and dance of compiling enough to build your
compiler, and then recompiling it all so that it's built with the correct
compiler.

It wouldn't be impossible to implement some sort of generic framework to
bootstrap circular dependencies, but nobody has yet wanted it strongly
enough to do it.

-- 
Gillette - the best a man can forget