Kevin Kofler wrote: > Jeroen van Meeuwen <kanarip <at> kanarip.com> writes: >> Half broken apps because of missing dependencies that are needed for >> "extra features" rather then "core functionality" is just bad >> programming/app design. > > But missing those "extra features" is exactly what I call "half broken". > Aha, I thought the 'broken' part implied buttons that do not respond and options that are in the --usage/--help but don't do anything (and the like) ;-) > I think soft dependencies are a much more admin-friendly way to handle this. > Rex Dieter is working on a proposal there: > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RexDieter/SoftDependencies +1 > It'd also have the advantage of not locking users into the > yum/pirut/system-install-packages framework if they wish to use apt-rpm or > smart instead. > Whatever other application a (super)user may install does not limit the features we could add to whatever we choose to be a system's default. apt-rpm and smart in this case would just not happily do soft deps. No big deal. And if they do, they may have no policy option. Again, no big deal. > And IMHO even a hard dependency is a better approach than a post-install > prompt. Disk space is cheap. > True, disk space is cheap, and for some parts of the world, that applies to bandwidth too. I also have to agree on that, under certain circumstances, hard deps are better. However that isn't mutually exclusive with soft deps. If soft deps for a package are 'listed' (in RPMDB?) and some file from the package requests a soft dep to be installed I presume a superuser could set something like a policy which allows or disallows the automated installation of the soft dep, without requiring the user to gain superuser privileges. That same policy could include 'follow', 'ask' or 'ignore' so that when the admin yum installs foo soft depending on bar, it could either automagically follow, ask or ignore. Kind regards, Jeroen van Meeuwen -kanarip -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
