Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Jason Flatt <jasonflatt AT wizard.com>]

On Sunday 27 October 2002 01:34 am, Eric Sandall wrote:
> Nick Jennings said:
> > Hi All,
> >
> >  One thing that really bugs me is having to answer y/n to an optional
> > dependancy of a spell I want, and I really don't know what the
> > particular dependancy enables/disables.
> >
> >  Wouldn't it be usefull to have maybe a quick one liner description of
> > what this enables/disables for the spell in question?
> >
> > - Nick
>
> ?  This is already done via optional_depends, as my previously posted
> example shows.  Or do you mean something else?
>
> -One of Four
> a.k.a. sandalle


I'm not trying to come down on you, Eric, but I agree with Nick, and your 
previous post is a good example:

optional_depends "Linux-PAM"           \
                 "--flag-for-swat"     \
                 "--flag-for-no-swat"  \
                 "for SWAT support"

This is only useful for people who know what SWAT is and why one would want 
it.  A better one liner might be: "to be able to configure SAMBA via a 
Web-based interface"

There are many spells in the grimoire with worse definitions than the one you 
proposed:

optional_depends "widget" "" "" "for widget support"

This is almost totally useless.  What does widget support get me?  Why do I 
want it?  Is widget support a good thing, or does it just take up hard drive 
space?  I can't even make an educated guess, based on that information.

I had a spell I cast a couple of weeks ago with several of those sorts of 
optional deps in there.  I had no idea if I wanted the optional stuff or not. 
 
I didn't know what they were supposed to do to or for the spell I wanted to 
install.  A little more verbage to clarify those optional deps is, IMO, A 
Good Thing(tm).

Again, I'm not trying to attack you.  I'm just trying to shed a little light 
on the subject.


-- 
Jason Flatt
Section maintainer for printer
E-mail (remove the spaces): jasonflatt @ wizard . com
E-mail (remove the spaces): jflatt @ sourcemage . org
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