Re: source dependencies
Hi,
>>"Juergen" == Juergen Menden <menden@morgana.camelot.de> writes:
Juergen> Andreas Jellinghaus <aj@dungeon.inka.de> wrote:
>> we should implement source dependencies as soon as possible.
Juergen> oh, no, not again...
Juergen> sorry i'm a bit late on this invocation of the subject so i
Juergen> don't really know the state of the discussion. please be
Juergen> patient with me... :-)
Juergen> please, everyone should remember that this can
Juergen> _always_and_ever_ _only_ be an incomplete list of what tools
Juergen> might get used during compilation.
let me guess. A comp sci major ? ;-)
Juergen> is there really somewhere around who is truely sure what
Juergen> tools autoconf-created configure scripts call? if there are:
Juergen> has anyone ever tried to find all programs Configure-scripts
Juergen> (like the one used in the perl package) uses? Or the poor X11
Juergen> maintainer who would have to check thousands of lines of
Juergen> recursive makefiles to find all the tools used, and even
Juergen> which tools are used by programs build at earlier stages
Juergen> during compilation. apart from gcc, which depends on gcc :-)
I think that should be fairly easy to determine. If it works
on your machine, write a perl script to look at your path, create a
list of all paths in your env, list all executables, see if the
executable occurs in the configure script, is so, grep
/var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list, and create a hash array of package name,
executable.
I can even make this efficient, but this is what I came up
with with about 5 seconds of thought. Also, the Configure scripts
list the programs they need right up on top (Have you looked? There
are a limited set of Confgure units as well, and the dependencies for
those are also calculated exactly everytime metaconfig generates a
Configure script).
awk, grep, sed, cat, file, find (shell utils, file utils,
findutils) go a long way.
Juergen> this is an _impossible_ task. i don't mean its uncomfortable,
Juergen> which it is, i mean this is really impossible (at least
Juergen> within polynomial time, said the theoretican).
I was right. Look, there are less than 2000 packages for
Debian, and there are a finite number of binaries. This can be
done. The configure script uses a farly limited set of binaries. So
we can't do it in polynomial time. We can do it overnight. This is
not a comprehensive exam.
Juergen> ok, so far the bad news. now, since aparently some people
Juergen> seem to suffer from this deficiency, a compromise: would
Juergen> those people, who have such problems, would be satisfied with
Juergen> a few lines in debian/readme where only those of the
Juergen> "unusual" tools are listed, which the maintainer found
Juergen> interesting, but _without_trying_to_be_complete_?
Deficiency? And how does this list help autocompiling?
>> todo (in this order)
Juergen> sounds nice. the only problem is: how do you decide which
Juergen> packages are needed for compilation?
>> it's not hard work, but it's work.
Juergen> said IBM and spent a few million dollars in trying to solve
Juergen> the termination-problem. ROTFL :-)
Then IBM should hire egineering types. This is doable, though
not instantaneously or in polynomial time (should we really care?)
amnoj
--
"There... I've run rings 'round you logically" Monty Python's Flying
Circus
Manoj Srivastava <url:mailto:srivasta@acm.org>
Mobile, Alabama USA <url:http://www.datasync.com/%7Esrivasta/>
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