Dependency loops considered harmful?

[Matthew Woehlke]

Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> Callum Lerwick wrote:
>> On Wed, 2008-09-03 at 14:12 -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
>>> Applications that consist of multiple packages, such as the game
>>> example, should be designated as a group rather than a looped
>>> dependency.
>> Actually a proper fix is to implement the per-package "explicitly
>> installed/pulled in as a dep" flag that has been discussed several times
>> in the past, and is already implemented (thus proven) in the "aptitude"
>> apt front end.
>>
>> We must address this user interface problem if Fedora is to be a shining
>> beacon of open source light in the looming dark future of closed
>> DRM-laden content delivery services such as Steam, Xbox Live and
>> PlayStation Network.
>>
> That works for a Mom and Pop desktop but doesn't work as a developer's
> workstation.  When developing software you might need a library that
> does Foo.  Look on the system, hey, I can use libFoo!  A few weeks
> later, when you remove Gnome-Foo from your system because your shiny new
>  application does the job, your app suddenly can't find libFoo....

This implies also that you installed Gnome-Foo-devel for whatever 
reason, and that it happened to require libFoo-devel. Otherwise you 
probably installed libFoo-devel by hand in order to use libFoo, and 
since libFoo-devel depends on libFoo, libFoo wouldn't be removed in this 
case.

> (Worse is if your working on an app sporadically and have to figure out
> why it's broken not knowing when it became that way.)

Are link errors really that obtuse?

> So if we track this some way, there needs to be a way to disable it.

Naturally :-).

-- 
Matthew
This message represents the official view of the voices in my head.
   -- Unknown
(found at http://goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/fun.html)