[Rpm-maint] RFC: experiments with rich dependencies

[Michael Schroeder]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 03:18:19PM +0300, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> I did find one "unexpected complication" [*] in the concept in my brief 
> testing, and in all likelihood there are more cases nobody thought of 
> etc... Just like we're still finding uncovered cases with the plain old 
> provide/requires/conflicts/obsoletes handling.

But you can't break an installed package by installing an unrelated
package, you should get a conflict. (If that doesn't happen you have
found a bug.)

The problem with "reverse requires" is that you can add a dependency
problem by just adding a repository. This can't happen with IF.

> With rpm 4.12 branched out and new development cycle just starting, this 
> would be the prime time to land in such big new features and AFAICS this 
> would make for a fine starting point for further refining. I'd say go ahead 
> and push this pretty much as-is [**], unless others have objections. 
> Florian?

Ah, but I was hoping for a discussion of the syntax. Are you ok with
the enclosing the rich deps with ()? What about the op names, I'd
love to use & as 'and' and | as 'or' (which also makes it more like
Debian), but I can't think of any good charater for 'if'.

Cheers,
  Michael.

-- 
Michael Schroeder                                   mls at suse.de
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH,  GF Jeff Hawn, HRB 16746 AG Nuernberg
main(_){while(_=~getchar())putchar(~_-1/(~(_|32)/13*2-11)*13);}