[IDEA] How to represent package version dependencies?

Ion-Mihai Tetcu itetcu at people.tecnik93.com
Sat Feb 26 13:53:52 GMT 2005


On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 20:43:28 +0800
Xin LI <delphij at frontfree.net> wrote:

> Hi, folks,
> 
> It seems that we have some controllable knobs for ports that is very
> commonly used, for instance, gcc.  We have:
> 
> USE_GCC=3.4
> 
> So the system will build gcc 3.4 when necessary.  However, it seems that
> there is no way to represent package version dependencies, for example,
> a software depends on gal 2.2.4+ to function correctly, we don't have
> some mechanism to detect this earlier, and the build process bounces at
> the configure stage.
> 
> Pros for having version dependencies:
>  - More user friendly.  A `make depends', for instance, can tell the
> user whether there are something that must be upgraded.  It's far better
> than just bouncing from the configure process.
>  - Better package.  Since we have the information, package tools can be
> warned before installing/updating packages, and give useful advise.
> 
> Cons for having the feature:
>  - Maintenance will need more work.  There is no apparent way to
> determine whether the specified version is accurate (e.g. will lower
> version work?)
>  - Some more work must be done in the current package tools to make use
> of the information.
> 
> My thought is that we add an optional component to the current DEPENDS
> specifier.  The scheme might be:
> 	file:package[:least_version]
> 
> When building package, and least_version is omitted, then the
> registration will use the version that is installed on the system.
> 
> Any suggestions?  Or is this totally not useful?

It will have at least the advantage of uniform handling; now one has to
do some grep in a .h or check the version of a .so, etc.

The problem is how you get the install package version, pkg_info being
said to be to slow for INDEX building.


-- 
IOnut
Unregistered ;) FreeBSD "user"




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