[SM-Discuss] expat depends

Robin Cook rcook at wyrms.net
Wed Jan 18 22:08:53 EST 2006


Just wish all programs gave the option to actually not use an optional
dependency.

Some just link to it if it's there or ignore if it's not, like
gtk-sharp-2 that I worked on the other day.

CuZnDragon
Robin Cook

> Support for a given optional dependency is not a function of whether
> or not the spell is installed or not, it is a function of what the
> user wants. Their decision might be effected by the status of the spell,
> but thats an implementation detail.
> 
> When you use an optional depends the dependency can either be on or off.
> The spell is then supposed to pass the appropriate options to the source's
> build configuration to enable or disable the support, or modify it if no such options exist. This is what eric was talking about.
> 
> The spell must explicitly disable support for something if the
> optional depends is disabled, especially if the dependency is installed.
> 
> If I have arts installed and cast xmms, i might not want xmms linking
> against arts at all. Note that optional_depends has additional parameters
> to specify an enabled and disabled option, which in the default case
> are passed to the ./configure script.
> 
> Also, depends/optional_depends can only be run during DEPENDS, which
> is only run once during cast. It also makes little sense to check if a
> dependent spell is installed or not because the dependent spell might
> be installed by the time the current spell is being built.
> 
> 
> The real answer to this problem is that spells need to explicitly list
> all of their dependencies, and properly disable linking to disabled
> optional_dependencies. The first problem is something that could be solved
> using the prometheus testing tool and a script written by dufflebunk to
> list missing dependencies. The hacky work-around thats being used is to
> check what spells are linking against the spell's libraries and
> trigger those whether or not a dependency exists. Each of those missing
> dependencies are actually bugs.
> 
> -Andrew
> 
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