I have recently had some minor difficulty with optional packages, which are those which enhance an applications' functionality but are not a definitive, runtime requirement. The best example of this is codecs - particularly GStreamer, since this is a popular audio framework. Most GStreamer plugin packages are not a requirement in those FrugalBuilds for those applications which use GStreamer. However if you don't have them installed and the application needs those to provide specific functionality, the user of the application may be confused as to why certain functions don't work; I know *I* get confused. :) To make all GStreamer plugins a dependency of every app that uses GStreamer leads to the installation of *many* packages, most of which are not required.
How can this problem be resolved? If plugins are not installed, the user may get odd behaviour. If *all* plugins are installed, the user has a lot of packages installed, most of which are not required. What options are available? IIRC Debian and Debian-based distributions have optional dependencies, but I don't know what this means in practice. If this has been discussed and resolved previously, sorry. May you always be Frugal, Russell Dickenson (AKA phayz) _______________________________________________ Frugalware-devel mailing list [email protected] http://frugalware.org/mailman/listinfo/frugalware-devel
