On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 02:54:39PM -0600, Dimitri Maziuk wrote: | * dman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) spake thusly: | > On Fri, Feb 15, 2002 at 12:56:19PM -0600, Dimitri Maziuk wrote: | > | Ok, now bitchx depends on xutils, who in turn suggests xfree86-common, | > ^^^^^^^^ | > | who in turn depends on libaxw and so on (THIS BOX HAS NO FSCKING X!!!). | > | > It is a sugggestion, not a requirement. | | Must be a brain fart: I'm sure it was "Suggests: xfree86-common" when I | looked at "packages that depend on xutils" in aptitude. Now that I checked, | xutils actually *depends* on xfree86-common.
Oh, Depends and Suggests are quite different. | Besides, that wasn't my point. I was referring to all those useless | libraries that get installed "because somebody might want to | * run $foo in xterm | * authenticate HTTP requests against mysql database | * etc." | | I'm sure it sounded like a reasonble idea at the time, but when | $foo depends on $bar who depends on $baz and so on ad nauseam, the | whole thing will get FUBAR eventually. All it takes is a little bug | somewhere in the middle of dependency tree, and you'll see apt | downloading 10GB of packages you didn't want while purging the ones | you did want "to satisfy dependencies". It is a tricky balancing act to find the minimal set that works, yet still be fully functional and not extraordinarily difficult to get more. There is a reason I haven't upgraded apache in quite a while. -D -- Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27