Detecting dependencies

[Doug Barton]

Howdy,

A couple of recent threads have mentioned clever ways to search for
dependencies. One problem ... there aren't any. :)  The *only* safe way
to make sure you have found all possible references to a dependency is
to grep the entire ports tree (grep -r category/portname /usr/ports/*).
There are just too many clever things that people do in various files
that aren't given conventional names that you will likely miss some
references if you don't.

Particularly useless (by itself) is using the INDEX to find dependencies
because it will miss any optional dependencies that are not enabled by
default. It is usually useful to cross-check the outcome of your grep
command to make sure that you have captured at least the known
on-by-default ones.


hth,

Doug

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