Dependency loops considered harmful?

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> 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.
> 
Not necessarily, as I pointed out here:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-September/msg00235.html

"""
This is possibly more pronounced in the world of scripting languages
where runtime and development bits are one and the same package.
"""

-Toshio

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