Hi, On 16.06.23 22:29, David Kalnischkies wrote:
The topic of "conditional dependencies" comes up once in a while, and that is basically how this came up as well – as a pipe dream. I was somewhat surprised Julian would actually go and post it seriously.
The things you usually want to express with those are roughly:
* if X, do not install foo (aka: bar recommends foo for printing, if machine can't print, don't install it)
* if X do also install foo (e.g. install firefox-l10n-de if firefox is installed and user wants german language packs)
* make a "clever" choice for virtual package rather than assuming the "real | virtual" can always list the best 'real' for everyone (e.g. different reals for different desktop environments)
All of these could be done with "negative" packages, even today. Recommends: foo-print | no-printing Recommends: firefox-l10n-de | no-task-german Recommends: gnome-terminal | no-gnome, kde-terminal | no-kde, lxde-terminal | no-lxdeThe reason we don't do that is that it creates a lot of bloat in the package list and all of these would show up in the package managers.
So, having a less annoying way to do negation would solve most of these problems -- are there any it doesn't solve?
Simon
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