[Rpm-maint] Enforce install/erase order without adding a Requires:

[Peter Bowen]

On Thu, 2010-11-25 at 14:13 +0100, FlorianFesti wrote:
> There have been various issues with packages that demand a special order 
> of installation but do not want to Require the package to be installed 
> first. So a tag that is like Requires: during ordering but ignored 
> otherwise is needed.
> 
> Panu had a look into the problem yesterday and it turned out this can be 
> done by simply adding a new tag triple and very few additional lines of 
> code. But it also turned out that's really hard to come up with a good 
> name for it. After banging our heads against the wall for the morning we 
> settled on "OrderWithRequires:" It is not really beautiful but here are 
> the reasons why we preferred it over two dozen other options:
> 
> * It contains "Requires" which make clear that it is handled exactly 
> like normal Requires during ordering.
> * We considered using "Sort" instead of "Order" as its less ambiguous 
> but "order" is already part of the rpm nomenclature (--noorder).
> * It does not contain "before" or "after" which get wrong when it comes 
> to ordering erases.
> * OrderWithRequires(pre) is supported and looks familiar.
> * It offers adding OrderWithRequiredBy later for adding a reverse relation.
> * It's long and descriptive. As it is going to be rarely used typing 
> effort is not an argument.
> 
> Nevertheless we still have the feeling there might be better names. 
> Suggestions are welcome!

What about "suggests" or "recommends"  (and "enhances" for the reverse)?
I think almost any scenario where you want explicit order but not a hard
dependency between packages falls into these categories.

Thanks,
Peter