[ale] Favorite distros

[Charles Marcus]

> From: Joseph A. Knapka
> Sent: Monday, August 26, 2002 4:45 PM
>
>> I don't think that is what he is describing.  If A
>> depends on B and C, and nothing else needs B, but D
>> need C, too, then A and B will be removed, but not C.

> Erg. So if I say to the machine, "emerge unmerge C",
> it will refuse to do so? That can't be what you mean.
>
> What Charles said a minute ago makes sense (where A<---B ==
> "Package B will not function without package A"):
>
> C<---B<---A
>      |
> D<---+
>
> D<--Q
>
> If I say, "emerge unmerge B", what should happen?
>
> Clearly A should go, because it won't work without B.
>
> Less clearly, but still desirable IMO, C should go, because
> nothing on the system is now using it. However, folks on
> a slow link might want C to stick around, because they
> might have only uninstalled B in order to install
> WhizBangBReplacement (in which case they want A to stay
> to, and so shouldn't be using reverse dependencies
> anyway).
>
> And clearly, too, D must stay, because Q won't work
> without it.
>
> I think I've got it :-)

Yep - it's a little more complicated than it might seem at first (which I
guess is why there is such a thing as an rpm hell ;) - I would imagine that
the Gentoo developers are going to make this as flexible as possible, with
some standard default behavior that can be overridden/modified with flags.

I am fairly confident that the Gentoo team will figure out an elegant way to
deal with these issues - but of course feel free to mosey on over there and
help them out, either with code, or suggestions, or both.  I know they
appreciate all the help they can get.

:)

Charles


---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.