On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 11:58:19AM +0200, Marc Espie wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 31, 2007 at 12:17:46PM +0200, Dieter Baron wrote:
> > 1.4 fix open-ended dependencies
[...]

> This is a nice idea. In OpenBSD, we currently have the equivalent
> of PROVIDES/REQUIRED, and it is indeed complicated. Adding an annotation
> that says `not compatible before XXX' is very nice.
> 
> However, I'd say it might still be a good idea to have both.

  I don't intend to remove PROVIDES/REQUIRED, I just don't want
pkg_install to have to use them, except maybe for consistency checks
in pkg_admin.

> The reason is that many, many packages are only used as dependencies for
> their libraries, and there is no problem with keeping the old libraries
> around for a while. Thus, you can have a scheme where you can update 
> some packages even when they're needed by something: you just have to keep 
> the shared libraries around in a stub package (we name these .libs-*)
> It works surprisingly well in most cases.

  And it has subtle problems that are ignored/overlooked surprisingly
often: This way, you can get two different versions of the same
library loaded into one program.  I wouldn't want to have to track the
resulting problems down.  Also, you would need to teach audit-packages
about these stub packages.

  At least the default operations of pkgsrc should prefer correctness
over fast-and-loose optimizations.  If people want rope to hang
themselves, I have no problem with that, as long as they have to
request it explicitly.

					yours,
					dillo