Stephen Hahn wrote: > * 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?
Assuming you're talking about a package specific policy and not a global one that a user/administrator manages. With most incorporation or group packages, I believe that the user is inherently committing to installing optional dependencies so policy controls (or prompts) shouldn't be necessary for them. We also need to be more informative about what we are installing. As much as I don't want to see pkg(5) become littered with yes/no prompts, it would really be nice to get prompted if installing a package is going to install additional dependencies. -- Shawn Walker _______________________________________________ pkg-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-discuss
