DEPEND/RDEPEND question

Lets say a package foo depends on bar, both at compile time
and run time.
Shouldn't DEPEND _and_ RDEPEND of the foo package reflect
that
dependency? I usually set DEPEND="$RDEPEND ..."
or vice-versa (depending
on which is the most demanding). Am I utterly wrong here?
I know that when a package is installed the usual way (not
from a binary
tarball) dependencies==RDEPEND+DEPEND, but portage
functionality could
change in the future. It may not be the wisest decision ever
made, but
portage could very well remove whatever dependencies are
found in DEPEND
- RDEPEND, once the package is installed.

On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 09:53:58AM +0300, Alin Nastac wrote:
> Lets say a package foo depends on bar, both at compile
time and run time.
> Shouldn't DEPEND _and_ RDEPEND of the foo package
reflect that
> dependency? I usually set DEPEND="$RDEPEND
..." or vice-versa (depending
> on which is the most demanding). Am I utterly wrong
here?

Unless there's been a change I'm not aware of, that's
right. You should
often use something similar to
 COMMON="..."
 DEPEND="$COMMON ..."
 RDEPEND="$COMMON ..."
when not exactly all of $DEPEND is part of RDEPEND or vice
versa though.

> I know that when a package is installed the usual way
(not from a binary
> tarball) dependencies==RDEPEND+DEPEND, but portage
functionality could
> change in the future. It may not be the wisest decision
ever made, but
> portage could very well remove whatever dependencies
are found in DEPEND
> - RDEPEND, once the package is installed.

You already mentioned binary packages. In addition to that,
I think bad
dependencies can break things even under current portage
versions by
building with ROOT set.

Something worth noting is that if RDEPEND is unset, it
defaults to
$DEPEND, so in some cases, DEPEND="..." can be
enough even if there are
also runtime dependencies. However, if RDEPEND is set at
all, it should
be complete (except that system packages of course can be
omitted).
-- 
gentoo-devgentoo.org mailing list

Alin Nastac wrote:
> Lets say a package foo depends on bar, both at compile
time and run time.
> Shouldn't DEPEND _and_ RDEPEND of the foo package
reflect that
> dependency? I usually set DEPEND="$RDEPEND
..." or vice-versa (depending
> on which is the most demanding). Am I utterly wrong
here?
> I know that when a package is installed the usual way
(not from a binary
> tarball) dependencies==RDEPEND+DEPEND, but portage
functionality could
> change in the future. It may not be the wisest decision
ever made, but
> portage could very well remove whatever dependencies
are found in DEPEND
> - RDEPEND, once the package is installed.

It needs to be in both.  For example if you only set it in
DEPEND,
merging to ROOT!=/ would break as the dep would get
installed in / and
not ROOT, so the app would fail to run.

-Antarus
-- 
gentoo-devgentoo.org mailing list

On Tuesday 25 April 2006 08:53, Alin Nastac wrote:
> Lets say a package foo depends on bar, both at compile
time and run time.
> Shouldn't DEPEND _and_ RDEPEND of the foo package
reflect that
> dependency? I usually set DEPEND="$RDEPEND
..." or vice-versa (depending
> on which is the most demanding). Am I utterly wrong
here?

This is right, when there're more dependencies in DEPEND
than in RDEPEND. If 
DEPEND == RDEPEND you should leave either one unset, as
Portage assumes that 
DEPEND == RDEPEND in that case.


To quote the ebuild policy: 

"The DEPEND variable inside your foo-x.y.z.ebuild
tells Portage about which 
packages are needed to build foo. The RDEPEND variable
specifies which 
packages are needed for foo to run. You only need to
explicitly specify 
RDEPEND if the ebuild's runtime dependencies are different
than what you 
specified in DEPEND; if not specified, RDEPEND will default
to your DEPEND 
settings. Never set RDEPEND to DEPEND yourself in an
ebuild."


Carsten