On Mon, 14 Apr 1997, Britton wrote: > I'm sorry to be dogmatic, but I'm going to say one more time that I like > things the way they are. If something depends on seperately maintained > library xyz it is not good but *GREAT* to know about it from the start. > The dependency structure sends this message to users load and clear, in a > way that a lumped package scheme would not even if a full description of > all dependencies were given when such a package was installed. I really > had no clue about the high level of software interdependence when I > started with slackware, and it hurt me continually. I think a little pain > with dselect in the beginning would have saved me a lot of grief later.
I agree that an understanding of the dependency structure is very important and helpful in avoiding future problems as the result of mistakes in package maintenance. One thing that I would like to see added to the dpkg program is an option to display the packages that are necessary (and which ones are uninstalled) to configure a particular new package. As I do not use dselect or dftp, this would be very timesaving to me. For example, rather than using the trial-and-error approach, I could do the following: $ dpkg --list-depends blah_1.0-1.deb Installed dependencies: blah-base ncurses Required dependencies: blah-lib Conflicts: none Or something to that effect. Any thoughts? Dave -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .