On Fri, 3 Dec 1999, Eduardo E. Horvath wrote:

: The main issue with that idea is that it requires maintenance of a
: single script encoding dependencies, precisely what the proposal was
: attempting to solve.

Ah!  It doesn't *require* maintaining the config file.  The user is free to
add REQUIRES: to a script (and I did state that system-provided scripts
would ship with the appropriate minimal dependencies encoded in REQUIRES:).

However, a config file also provides that centralized location for
*additional* dependencies that some of us desire, so that a bunch of scripts
don't need to be edited by hand to achieve the desired effect.

: Since these scripts should be extremely simple, having only
: PROVIDES/REQUIRES and maybe a single command to run, they could be
: generated mechinically by something that takes that information as
: parameters or queries the user.

I never said this couldn't be done.  The central config file offers a way to
add additional, optional dependencies by the admin, without editing a bunch
of scripts.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (tv@pobox.com)