[linux-elitists] Gentoo, linux users too can be racers

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Sun, Oct 28, 2007 at 10:19:46PM -0700, James Sparenberg wrote:
> 3.  RPM and deb both need a logical "OR" for dependencies.  (deb may have a 
> crude form) The ability for me as a packager to say "depends on ImageMagick > 
> XX or imagemagick > XX or Imagemagick > Xx would really make it easy to have 
> one package for 3 variants.  In fact this is often the only thing keeping me 
> from building a single package is the absence of either a logical or, or, 
> standardized nameing.

Deb supports logical OR.  It looks like:
  Depends: ..., debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0
What's crude about it?

Debian also has standardized naming, of course.

> 4.  Forced removal of packages I want to keep.  Debian is the worst here. I 
> install X that requires Y and Z ... later when I remove X it says that Y and 
> Z are orphaned and need to be removed ... Ubuntu variant of Debian gets real 
> insistant that I remove Y and Z.  I want to keep them so I have to remove 
> them.... and then re-install them Once I do debian says "Ok they aren't part 
> of a dependency chain they are ok.  *sigh*

>From the beginning of aptitude.1, regarding 'aptitude install':

  Not every package listed on the command line has to be installed;
  you can tell aptitude to do something different with a package by
  appending an "override specifier" to the name of the package. ...
  The following override specifiers are available:
     ...
     <package>&m: Mark <package> as having been manually installed.

So 'aptitude install Y&m Z&m; aptitude remove X', or even 'aptitude
remove X Y&m Z&m'.  (There's some way to access this stuff in the
interactive UI, I believe involving the 'm' key, but I'm feeling too
elite to read any more of the manual right now.)

> 5. Forced dependencies.  Were there is no real dependency (like a lib) but 
> instead it's "Well people who like X also want Y and Z.) Yes I want a text 
> editor and no I don't want a full office suite.  Why can't I install a word 
> processor without a full office suite. 

'aptitude install openoffice.org-writer'.  See also Depends vs.
Recommends vs. Suggests.

> Ok.. rant off ... I feel better back to my hole in the wall.  I really need to 
> make my next box LFS again

Have fun.

-- Nathaniel

-- 
"Of course, the entire effort is to put oneself
 Outside the ordinary range
 Of what are called statistics."
  -- Stephan Spender