On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 11:05:47AM -0500, Matyas Selmeci wrote: > Matthew Garrett wrote on Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 05:00:28PM +0100: > > On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 10:51:26AM -0500, Matyas Selmeci wrote: > > > Kevin Kofler wrote on Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 01:02:26PM +0200: > > > > Michael Schroeder wrote: > > > > > Sounds like you want weak dependencies (i.e. "Suggests" et al). > > > > > > > > In this case, I think disjunctive dependencies (default | virtual), as > > > > Matthew Garrett pointed out, are the right solution, not soft dependencies > > > > (though those would also be nice). > > > > > > > > Kevin Kofler > > > Functionally speaking, what is the difference between a soft dependency > > > and a disjunctive dependency? How can you satisfy a soft dependency if > > > you don't know what virtual dependency it is being used to provide? > > > > If we have: > > > > Requires: phonon-backend > > Suggests: phonon-backend-gstreamer > > > > What would you expect the outcome to be on a system that has > > phonon-backend-xine? I'd have thought that phonon-backend-gstreamer > > would get installed, even if you can later remove it. That's not the > > desired outcome. > > I see. So 'Suggests' means it gets automatically installed (unless it > explicitly conflicts with something already install I presume?), but > can be removed without breaking the package it was brought in for > (unless no other package provides the phonon-backend dependency). > Do I have that right? In Debian, 'Suggests', 'Recommends' etc have very specific meanings. See in particular section 7.2 here: http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html RPM of course doesn't have anything except hard requirements. Rich. -- Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones virt-top is 'top' for virtual machines. Tiny program with many powerful monitoring features, net stats, disk stats, logging, etc. http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
