[Rpm-maint] How to prevent rpmbuild from including dependencies on non-rpm libraries

[James Olin Oden]

On 2/7/07, Michael Schroeder <mls at suse.de> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 11:54:52AM -0500, James Olin Oden wrote:
> > P.S. In the other fork of rpm much work is being done to supply
> > runtime probes for dependencies.  I have no idea what this fork's
> > maintainers think about that.  IMO its a usefull feature that still
> > needs much thought before unleashing, and certainly it should be
> > highly configurable (i.e. some times for some things it may not always
> > be desirable that they be probed).
>
> The problem with runtime probes is that they don't stop you from
> deleting packages that other packages still depend on.
>
Yeah, there are many problems, but ultimately its a philisophical
issue.  I personally, never ever want runtime probes, because
something that is found that is not listed as a provides (whether auto
or otherwise) in the systems package set is a failure on my part to
properly manage the systems configuration.  Yes I am
anal.  But with some folks if its their on the system, then from their
stand point
the dependency is provided for.   Its a valid view, its just not a
choice I would
make.  On the other hand their are some run time probes that I do
like, but these are usually in areas like getconf values, or things
like versions of BIOS's or hardware configurations that just won't be
available in the package database or shouldn't be.  Even then I'm
hesitant.  That said, I still think for some people this is a powerful
feature, and if they want to manage their systems that way, I'm
willing for them to have that choice.

Cheers...james