rpm 4.12 and weak dependencies

[Miloslav Trmač]

(reordering the citations!)
> > > Why should we ban weak dependencies if they really
> > > do nothing in YUM?
> > 
> > We need a precise and detailed functional description about what these
> > "weak dependencies" are supposed to do.
> 
> Do you mean something like this?
> 
> http://rpm.org/wiki/PackagerDocs/Dependencies

That documentation belongs upstream (and should _not_ be just repeated within our packaging guidelines IMHO).

Rather, there are Fedora-specific questions to figure out.

* That page says that Suggests/Enhances: will prompt the user.  Do any of the Fedora tools actually do that?  Do the _relevant_ tools do that?  If not, we shouldn’t be using these tags I guess.
  (This question impacts the packaging guidelines.)
* Assuming our packaging tools do support the tags, what should the installable repo creation / live image creation do?  What does it do?
  (This one doesn’t.)

> > >> Before dnf gets promoted as the default package manager, it would be
> > >> interesting to do some widespread testing.
> > >> 
> > >> 1. document dnf behavior with weak dependencies and related
> > >> configuration options
> > >> 2. let people experiment and provide feedbacks
> > >> 3. based on feedbacks either propose guidelines or status quo if
> > >> that's ok
> > > 
> > > I agree with Haïkel.
> > 
> > I do not.
> 
> I agree with Haikel and Petr, we have a great opportunity to test this and see
> how it works.

What exactly is the “it” you want to test and have a great opportunity to test?  I assume the RPM and DNF upstreams do their own testing of this without depending on Fedora repos to carry such packages.  Yes there are Fedora-specific questions but it seems to me that testing them is just not possible at this point.
     Mirek