Recommended vs required dependencies

If you have any suggestions or ideas about improving Salix, here's the place to post them.
User avatar
gapan
Salix Wizard
Posts: 6238
Joined: 6. Jun 2009, 17:40

Re: Recommended vs required dependencies

Post by gapan »

What are you all talking about?

Recommended dependencies (or rather suggested dependencies as they are actually called) are already a feature of slapt-get/gslapt. They have always been. And there are many packages that are making use of that feature. For example all the gstreamer packages, like this one:

Code: Select all

# slapt-get --show gst-plugins-good
Package Name: gst-plugins-good
Package Mirror: http://salix.enialis.net/x86_64/14.0/
Package Priority: Preferred
Package Location: ./salix/l
Package Version: 0.10.31-x86_64-1gv
Package Size: 1017 K
Package Installed Size: 4068 K
Package Required:   gstreamer,gst-plugins-base
Package Conflicts:   
Package Suggests:   aalib,alsa-lib,audiofile,esound,flac,libavc1394,libcaca,libdrm,libdv,libiec61883,libogg,libraw1394,libshout,libsoup,libtheora,libvorbis,slang,slang1,speex,sqlite,taglib,v4l-utils,wavpack
Package MD5 Sum:  63918c529d0aff90c0b35ab53008d6a9
Package Description:
 gst-plugins-good (a set of good-quality plug-ins under LGPL)
 
 GStreamer Good Plug-ins is a set of plug-ins that we consider to have
 good quality code, correct functionality, our preferred license (LGPL
 for the plug-in code, LGPL or LGPL-compatible for the supporting
 library).
 
 
 
 
 
Package ChangeLog:
 Added.  Overriding the Slackware package. This one includes several additional  plugins: 1394, dv, gconfelements, shout2, souphttpsrc and speex.

Package Installed: yes
See the "Package Suggests" line?

It's the responsibility of the packager to determine if any of the dependencies are actually optional. If they are, they should be put in a .sug file, instead of in the .dep file. I have no idea about vlc, because I never use it. The packager has determined that samba is a dependency, but if it can work without samba, then samba should be a suggestion instead of a dependency. I don't know if it can, I haven't tried it.
Image
Image
User avatar
mimosa
Salix Warrior
Posts: 3311
Joined: 25. May 2010, 17:02
Contact:

Re: Recommended vs required dependencies

Post by mimosa »

This feature had passed me by. So is the default to install suggests? How would one change it? slapt-get's man page says nothing about it.

I'm not sure what to make of the fact that I have happily used Salix for however many years it is without noticing this possibility of saving a few megabytes disk storage if I could be bothered. :mrgreen:

In my limited experience as a packager, I err on the side of putting it in if it looks as though it is needed. :?
User avatar
gapan
Salix Wizard
Posts: 6238
Joined: 6. Jun 2009, 17:40

Re: Recommended vs required dependencies

Post by gapan »

Package suggestions are not installed by default and you can't change that default. They are only just that: suggestions. You can view them with gslapt and when you install a package with slapt-get that suggests other packages as well, you see a message that lists those suggestions.
Image
Image
Post Reply