Re: [patch] remove build dependencies in bsd.ports.mk

On Mon, 2005-Nov-21 01:53:13 -0800, Nate Eldredge wrote:
>works as follows.  Suppose package Foo requires package Bar, and neither 
>is currently installed.  When you request the installation of Foo, Bar is 
>also installed, but an "auto" flag is set for Bar.  Any package with the 
>auto flag set is only kept so long as something depends on it.  If I 
>remove Foo, Bar is automatically removed as well, provided I haven't in 
>the meantime added anything else which depends on it.

This would work OK for runtime dependencies but handling build-time
only dependencies would need some careful thought.  Whilst it might be
reasonable to automatically remove gcc-ooo after installing
Openoffice.org, I probably wouldn't want autoconf, automake, imake etc
deleted immediately after building something that needed them.

>I would guess build dependencies should be treated like regular 
>dependencies.  If they're removed after building, then you would have to 
>reinstall them every time you upgrade the depending package.

They can't be treated totally as runtime dependencies because you don't
need (or want) them installed if you install a package (rather than
building a port).

>Anyway, AFAIK FreeBSD doesn't have anything like this, but it would be 
>nifty if it did.

Agreed.

-- 
Peter Jeremy