[ale] Favorite distros

[Charles Marcus]

> From: Joseph A. Knapka
> Sent: Monday, August 26, 2002 4:09 PM
>
>>>> Can't wait for the full reverse-dependancy checking
>>>> (uninstall something, it uninstalls all packages that
>>>> it is dependant on that are not also dependancies for
>>>> other programs)!

>>> Why the qualifier? Surely it should recursively remove
>>> everything directly or indirectly dependent on the
>>> package in question?

>> Either I am misunderstanding your question, or you mis-
>> read what I said.
>>
>> Yes, it would be brain-dead simple to simply uninstall
>> all dependancies, since the list is in the ebuild.
>>
>> It is quite another thing, however, to check each
>> dependancy before uninstalling it to see if any other
>> packages that you have installed (either before or after
>> the package you are uninstalling) also depend on it -
>> otherwise, you just broke that package.

> If package A depends on package B, which depends on package
> C, then if you remove C, both A and B are broken. It seems
> to me that both should be removed. But you seem to be saying
> that the dependency-checking should only look one level
> deep, so to speak. Why?

OK, I see - you are asking the question but in reverse...

I am saying that if Package A & B both depend on package C, and you remove
package B, Portage should determine that although package B depended on
package C, since package A *also* depends on package C, it should *not*
remove package C - but if there were no other packages that depended on
package C, then it *should*.

The developers are working on *full* reverse dependancy checking, so that no
matter what you remove, it will *only* remove dependancies that are *not*
needed by any other package, *regardless* of what level the dependancy
exists.

Hope that clears this one up...

Charles


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