Arch Linux

peschmae

Member

Registered: 2004-02-28

Posts: 18

Depend on x or y possible?

Hi,

is there a way to make the gnome control-center depend either on the package "metacity" or on "expocity" so that it would require one of them to be installed (but not both of them 'cause they conflict)

Peschmä

andy

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2002-10-11

Posts: 374

Re: Depend on x or y possible?

In general this kind of problem is solved by the

provides

variable. With that mechanism the package that requires either one would depend on the dependency described by "provides".

For your example, metacity and expocity both would provide, e.g. "gnomewm", and control-center would then depend on "gnomewm".

I myself used these fields a bit, but the automatic dependency resolution may be .... "unexpected"

peschmae

Member

Registered: 2004-02-28

Posts: 18

Re: Depend on x or y possible?

Does "unexpected" mean that there's no way to specify a default "gnomewm"?
Can I also make expocity's "provides=('metacity') ? (Well I'll just check it out ) Answer: No

Peschmä

andy

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2002-10-11

Posts: 374

Re: Depend on x or y possible?

Does "unexpected" mean that there's no way to specify a default "gnomewm"?

I think you are right and the default is the alphabetcally first (but I would test it). If you can think of a universal solution to the problem you should file a bug report with an outline of the solution (or just file a bug report ;-) and let the developers scratch their heads ...) One thing I could think of is, if pacman sees that a package depends on a "virtual" package, then let pacman just stop and let the user choose which one he wants.