[fedora-arm] F15 package dependency graph

[R P Herrold]

On Sun, 5 Jun 2011, Chris Tyler wrote:

> Right -- but the next question is, what can you build with that "minimal
> build chroot"? The answer well under half -- closer to 1/3 -- of the
> Fedora package collection. So the question becomes, what is the minimum
> seed set needed to produce the entire package collection? And where are
> there circular dependencies?

I think a better question is to ask: what is needed in 
distribution design first -- what 'target' is desired? 
Server, developer's workstation, end user's media device, 
whatever

Simply saying 'everything in another's design' _may_ be a 
later goal, but cannot be the first goal, or else one will end 
up blocked on some obsolete package that no-one uses, and not 
attain much of anything

I say this having been involved in splitting out a server 
oriented subset rebuild of the RHEL 6 sources, this spring. 
If we had implemented 'firstboot' we would have carried in 
huge GUI and sound tool and library dependeciess that are 
simply not in scope

Circular build dependencies are not really a big deal -- one 
codes around them to break the circularlty, to bootstrap into 
an intitial solve, then re-build from that partial solve, into 
the full set -- see, eg, in Java space:

[herrold at bronson alpine]$ yum list \*nodep\*
Available Packages
ant-nodeps.i386

... similarly on the RHEL 6 sources, there was a 
non-self-hosting circular dependency on valgrinnd and the 
OpenMPI drivers

They happen, they get worked around .. no big deal

-- Russ herrold