How to find package dependencies from the package

[Roman Neuhauser]

# lists at mcdermottroe.com / 2005-09-14 20:59:45 +0100:
> How do I programatically find out the list of packages that a given
> package depends on?
> 
> Given packages found at
> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-stable/All/
> and
> http://pointyhat.freebsd.org/errorlogs/i386-5-packages-latest/All/
> and so on, I have done the following:
> 
> pkg_info -r $package.tbz
> 
> This always claims that the package depends on nothing at all, even when
> I'm fairly sure it does. For example for the net/poptop port I get the
> following:
> 
> 20:55 root at platinum [~]# fetch
> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-stable/All/poptop-1.1.4.b4_3.tbz
> poptop-1.1.4.b4_3.tbz                         100% of   23 kB   49 kBps
> 20:55 root at platinum [~]# pkg_info -r poptop-1.1.4.b4_3.tbz
> Information for poptop-1.1.4.b4_3.tbz:
> 
> Depends on:
> 
> 20:56 root at platinum [~]#
> 
> This happens despite the fact that the entry at
> http://www.freebsd.org/ports/net.html says:
> 
> poptop-1.1.4.b4_3 
>         Windows 9x compatible PPTP (VPN) server
>         Long description | Package | Sources | Main Web Site
>         Maintained by: ports at FreeBSD.org
>         Requires: expat-1.95.8_3, gettext-0.14.5, gmake-3.80_2,
>         libgnugetopt-1.2, libiconv-1.9.2_1
> 
> This makes no sense to me, but I presume that either something is broken
> somewhere or (way more likely) I am broken somewhere. :-)

    You obviously don't need gmake to install the binary package,
    and expat, gettext, and libiconv are gmake's dependencies.

    Why you're not seeing libgnugetopt is a different matter, it's not
    recorded in the +CONTENTS file; the port has it in RUN_DEPENDS,
    though.

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