autodetecting dependencies

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2012-Apr-09 21:02:01 -0500, Stephen Montgomery-Smith <stephen at missouri.edu> wrote:
>So suppose we are building port A.  It turns out that the configure in 
>port A autodetects whether package B is present or not.  It will build 
>either way.  But if built with package B, it will not operate without it.
...
>What are the accepted ways of handling this?
>
>1.  Don't worry about it.  tinderbox builds will never build port A in 
>the presence of package B.
>
>2.  Have the Makefile of port A detect whether package B is installed, 
>and if it is then add B as a dependency of A.
>
>3.  Cripple the configure in port A so that it doesn't autodetect for 
>package B.

Preference order is 3, 2, 1.  1 is the least desirable because the
resultant packages may include implicit dependencies without
explicit dependencies.  It can also cause subtle problems when port
B is updated without updating port A.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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