On Thursday 08 January 2004 11:23 am, grant beattie wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 08, 2004 at 04:15:45PM +1000, Rene Hexel wrote:
> >   I have attached diffs to pkgsrc that do the following:
> >
> >   - Introduce a new variable, RECOMMENDED, that has
> >     the same syntax as DEPENDS.
>
> the word "RECOMMENDED" in this context, at least to me, says that
> the dependency is optional but recommended (ie. the pkg would build
> without it), which isn't exactly what you're getting at. I don't have
> a better word suggestion, but I'm sure there is one.
>
> there was talk about introducing optional dependencies some time ago.
> I fear that "recommended" and "optional" having different fundamental
> meanings would cause chaos. :)
>
> g.

How about basically doing what Rene said but changing the semantics a 
little bit so that the BUILDLINK_RECOMMENDED become the 
BUILDLINK_DEPENDS and the old BUILDLINK_DEPENDS for cases that caused 
this discussion could go to BUILDLINK_DEPRECATED (of course alternate 
naming suggestions welcome).  Thus changing IGNORE_RECOMMENDED 
BUILD_WITH_DEPRECATED (naming suggestions again).

The ideas being that 'the norm' stays the same, the exceptional case 
becomes apparent and in time the _DEPRECATED can be removed.

In addition (if not already the case) it would be nice if the package 
data contained the information that it was build with _DEPRECATED.

-- 
Adam C. Migus - http://people.migus.org/~amigus/