* Shawn Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2008-07-24 23:55]:
> Danek Duvall wrote:
> > With recursive uninstall working again in my workspace, I've discovered
> > that even removing a leaf package likely requires a recursive uninstall,
> > because slim_install has a "required" dependency on it.
> > 
> > That leads me to believe that slim_install is doing the wrong thing with
> > its dependencies.  They should probably be optional instead of required.
> > Of course, then you actually need some mechanism to make installation of
> > slim_install actually install all its dependencies.  We have the notion of
> > a "require optional" policy, but weak support for it.
> > 
> > My idea was to have a commandline flag for install that would turn on
> > following optional dependencies just for packages specified on the
> > commandline (optional dependencies specified further down in the tree would
> > respect only the image-wide policy).
> > 
> > Unfortunately, that has the downside that for people actually wanting to
> > install slim_install or redistributable (or, more pointedly, gcc-dev or
> > ss-dev, which would naturally have the same change made to them), they'd
> > have to know to specify the magic flag, or they'd just get a single,
> > seemingly empty package installed.
> > 
> > Any thoughts?
> 
> I would rather not break the convenience or ease of "pkg install ss-dev".
> 
> New users shouldn't have to know about a special flag or any options to 
> get that to work right.

  You're both right.  Both incorporating and group packages should have
  optional dependencies, but group packages should have a package tag
  that says, "for install, include optional dependencies", so that users
  (and GUIs) don't need to remember some variable flag.  Perhaps
  pkg.policy.install_optional?

  - Stephen

-- 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://blogs.sun.com/sch/
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