Thomas Sachau | 12 Oct 19:04
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System packages in (R)DEPEND?

I see packages like bison, flex, perl or sed in the system set. And i also see ebuilds depending on
them. I also heard from Peter Volkov (pva) that there where discussions about removing different
packages from the system set. So now my question is:

Should we depend on all system packages? Should we depend on some packages, because they could be
removed? If yes, which ones? Or should we leave the system packages out completly?

--

-- 
Thomas Sachau

Gentoo Linux Developer

Duncan | 12 Oct 21:48

Re: System packages in (R)DEPEND?

Thomas Sachau <tommy <at> gentoo.org> posted 48F22E15.5050604 <at> gentoo.org,
excerpted below, on  Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:04:21 +0200:

> I see packages like bison, flex, perl or sed in the system set. And i
> also see ebuilds depending on them. I also heard from Peter Volkov (pva)
> that there where discussions about removing different packages from the
> system set. So now my question is:
> 
> Should we depend on all system packages? Should we depend on some
> packages, because they could be removed? If yes, which ones? Or should
> we leave the system packages out completly?

The idea has been to reduce the system set, but packages coming out of it 
will of necessity need to be widely known.

Meanwhile, in general, the system set should be reasonable to rely on in 
general.  The cases where system packages are in depends should generally 
be limited to those in which it's necessary to resolve circular 
dependencies, with the help of USE=build and boostrap, or to other 
special cases (like a dependency on a specific USE flag on a system 
package, or where not all profiles may depend on the same system 
packages, etc).

IOW, "normal" packages shouldn't need to specify "normal" dependencies on 
system packages.  At least, that's how I've read the discussion I've seen 
to date.

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Jeremy Olexa | 13 Oct 21:34
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Re: System packages in (R)DEPEND?

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 12:04 PM, Thomas Sachau <tommy <at> gentoo.org> wrote:
> I see packages like bison, flex, perl or sed in the system set. And i also see ebuilds depending on
> them. I also heard from Peter Volkov (pva) that there where discussions about removing different
> packages from the system set. So now my question is:
>
> Should we depend on all system packages? Should we depend on some packages, because they could be
> removed? If yes, which ones? Or should we leave the system packages out completly?

In my quick 30 seconds of searching I found at least one bug on this
very issue. You may find more if you look for them. ;)

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=221311

Please provide reasons/justifications for the proposal of removing
packages from the system set or from the ebuilds instead of just
raising random questions (which end up with no results and hence just
"noise").

-Jeremy

Peter Volkov | 14 Oct 15:28
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Re: System packages in (R)DEPEND?

В Пнд, 13/10/2008 в 14:34 -0500, Jeremy Olexa пишет:
> On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 12:04 PM, Thomas Sachau <tommy <at> gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Should we depend on all system packages? Should we depend on some packages, because they could be
> > removed? If yes, which ones? Or should we leave the system packages out completly?
>
> https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=221311
> 
> Please provide reasons/justifications for the proposal of removing

Our documentation, QA team insist that we should not depend on system
packages and there are good reasons to do that. But still above bug
clearly states different. Also if we consider perl and some other
packages, they also could became target to be removed... But I'm not
going to repeat discussion we already had recently:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/54035

So yes, there is ambiguity and the question is valid. But since we had
discussion recently I don't see what else we can discuss now.

--

-- 
Peter.

Steve Long | 15 Oct 11:07

Re: System packages in (R)DEPEND?

Peter Volkov wrote:
> Jeremy Olexa ?????:
>> Thomas Sachau wrote:
>> > Should we depend on all system packages? Should we depend on some
>> > packages, because they could be removed? If yes, which ones? Or should
>> > we leave the system packages out completly?
>>
>> https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=221311
>> 
>> Please provide reasons/justifications for the proposal of removing
> 
> Our documentation, QA team insist that we should not depend on system
> packages and there are good reasons to do that. But still above bug
> clearly states different. Also if we consider perl and some other
> packages, they also could became target to be removed... But I'm not
> going to repeat discussion we already had recently:
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/54035
> 
> So yes, there is ambiguity and the question is valid. But since we had
> discussion recently I don't see what else we can discuss now.
> 
Well according to [1] it should all be done in the profiles, and [2] seems
like a good way to accomplish a more effective split. Is there anything
which means portage can't simply move ahead with that?

[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/54146
[2] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.portage.devel/2575


Gmane