Re: [gentoo-dev] DEPENDing on system components

[Dan Armak <danarmak@gentoo.org>]

On Monday 23 July 2001 21:29, you wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 09:25:46PM +0300, Dan Armak wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Can someone enlighten me: why DEPEND/RDEPEND on packages which are
> > *always* present on the system, and are even pre-built in build
> > snapshots? For example some ebuilds explicitly depend on virtual/glibc,
> > what's the point in that? Many ebuilds use things like flex bison etc. to
> > compile. When creating non-critical, non-system ebuilds which certainly
> > won't be built before glibc or the kernel - should I keep track of these
> > things?
>
> This is necessary so that you can build a complete system from scratch in
> the right order, i.e:
>
> # export ROOT=/mnt/gentoo
> # emerge system
>
> It's just safer to have some of these basic dependencies (like
> virtual/glibc) since they help "emerge system" with the build ordering. 
> Also, some of these more basic dependencies *may not* be standard for
> embedded Gentoo Linux systems.
>
I understand that. Problem is, most packages don't have a published list for 
the basic utilities which they use. To find out you basically have to read 
the Makefile and look for any such commands. Buildinig an 'empty' system that 
doesn't even have flex etc. sounds rather difficult, unless I just remove 
flex from an existing one. So in really high-level things like enscript which 
I just added, is it an absolute must?
Besides this is easy enough to fix if someone encounters a missing dependency.
-- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer
Matan, Israel