Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Nick Jennings <nkj AT namodn.com>]

On Sun, Oct 27, 2002 at 08:16:50AM -0700, Jason Flatt wrote:
> On Sunday 27 October 2002 01:34 am, Eric Sandall wrote:
> > Nick Jennings said:
> > >  Wouldn't it be usefull to have maybe a quick one liner description of
> > > what this enables/disables for the spell in question?
> >
> > ?  This is already done via optional_depends, as my previously posted
> > example shows.  Or do you mean something else?
> 
> 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).

 Exactly, I didn't have a sourcemage box in front of me to give examples,
 but you've hit the nail on the head. I often am at a complete loss when
 selecting whether I want an optional depends or not, and simply have
 to guess.

 It's really annoying. 

- Nick