Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo gets as bad SuSE: Circular dependencies [WAS: Thank you Gentoo devs]

["Bo Ørsted Andresen" <bo.andresen@zlin.dk>]

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On Wednesday 16 May 2007 16:54:13 Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Wed, 16 May 2007 16:23:13 +0200, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
> > Thank you for producing lots of circular dependencies
> > (ie. in the Xserver), which make maintenance complicated.
>
> Lots? If you'd posted this yesterday, I would[n't] have been able to recall
> the last time I was hit with one.
>
> > Great, great thanks to the devs for forcing me to maintain my
> > own overlay to clean up the crap. (anyone who's interested in
> > it, please give a note).
>
> I did get a circular dependency today, sdl and directfb and guess what?
> The error message also contained the solution, which was to temporarily
> change a USE flag.

Circular dependencies are mostly a problem for new users since as soon as the 
dependencies are installed the circular dependencies are satisfied and hence 
irrelevant.

The real problem comes when a new user right after finishing install sets a 
bunch of use flags and attempts to emerge gnome or kde only to be greeted 
with 40 lines or more of circular dependencies.

Enrico's 'brilliant' solution is to split packages like Debian (which again 
makes me wonder why he doesn't just switch back to that). The route the 
Gentoo devs are going to take, however, is to improve portage which 
unfortunately tends to drag on... For the impatient this is one of things 
that paludis does a lot better than portage.

For the general case I fully agree with the rest of your post.

-- 
Bo Andresen

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