On 03/04/2010 08:57 PM, Patrick Nagel wrote:
Obviously, users who "re-install" Gentoo the way you do will have less
difficulties resolving a circular dependency than those who are just following
the guide and getting their first Gentoo experience.
I think that the cups issue is probably worth mentioning in the
Handbook. Whether it is there by default or not lots of people get
burned by it. A little advanced warning would help.
I think that at the very least following the handbooks to the letter
should never lead to an error.
I think that a good argument can be made for or against having cups in
the desktop profile - this might actually be the sort of thing a survey
would be useful to address.
I think that is separate from the circular dependency issue. As long as
we have an unresolved circular dependency I think cups should be off the
list. However, I'd be the first to agree that this is a short-term
solution.
The problem is that we only have two long-term solutions so far:
1. A smarter package manager that can work through these dependencies
automatically.
2. Splitting packages like poppler that have these issues.
Both of these need effort to address. #1 requires PM work, and #2
requires an ongoing commitment to do more work to keep poppler working.
Unless somebody can come up with a #3 at this point the most
constructive thing anybody can do is help out. A good place to start
would be to write up some patches to the handbook that clearly explain
how to deal with this problem.
I'm not sure I agree with the poppler maintainers but they may have
reasons that aren't apparent to me and the fact is that it is a whole
lot easier to tell somebody how to maintain a package when I'm not the
one actually doing the work. Nothing gets results in FOSS like dirty
hands...
Rich
