Excessive package interdependency

[Thomas Hille]

Am Mi, den 17.12.2003 schrieb Felipe Alfaro Solana um 23:07:
> On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 22:00, Thomas Hille wrote:
> 
> > I have one too: mc (midnight commander) needs XFree86-libs
> 
> This has been already explained: if you compile mc from its sources
> (.src.rpm file) on a system which has XFree86-libs-devel installed,
> during compilation, "mc" will detect a functional XFree86 development
> environment and will enable additional extensions for running "mc" under
> X (for example, using the mouse on a terminal window).

It uses the Xterm mouse-sequences, nothing else (well, that's what their
documentation says)

> 
> The only way to stop this is to recompile "mc" from its SRPM package on
> a system which *has no* XFree86 development libraries and files
> available. So, during compilation, "mc" won't detect those development
> libraries and won't enable those extra dependencies.
> 
> If, for every imaginable package, the centralized Fedora build system
> should starting installing/removing development packages before
> compiling a package just to remove some dependencies, then the build
> system would become a complete nightmare.
> 
> The best you can do is compile "mc" yourself. That's what I do whan a
> package requires functionality I don't want/need/desire.

I get your point, but as I have understood the build-system could handle
that quite easily - but that should somebody say who has more insight
into the build-system than me.

On the other hand you should consider, that especially mc, the typical
console-application, used (at least by me) in ssh-sessions, really
doesn't need X. And as I pointed out before, I'm not sure to which
extend mc makes use of the libs, if any. I will look a bit further into
this issue.

Until then, I just force the installation (nodeps) without the X-libs. -
works fine. Even mouse over ssh in an xterm......

-Thomas-