Package information -- optional dependencies of?

jimduchek · 2012-02-01 04:44:52

Hi all. Some packages have 'optional dependencies'. Just as an example, yaourt has an optional dependency on rsync. However, in the package information for rsync, there's no mention that it's an optional dependency of another package. Is there anyway to get this information?

The reason I ask is this -- occasionally I go through and clean out orphan packages. I have a script that helps with this, allowing me to view the output of 'pacman -Qi' for each orphan package and choose whether or not to remove it. However, I have, on occasion, broken ome piece of system functionality by removing a package that is an optional dependency, as that information isn't available.

I apologize if this is a topic that's been covered before, but the search terms I can think of come up with a LOT of hits.

Thanks in advance,
Jim

Allan · 2012-02-01 05:01:32

Not yet... handling these better is something being targeted in future pacman releases.

karol · 2012-02-01 12:57:29

You can use the online database http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/gtk2/ but it works only for the packages from the official repos.
Maybe taking notes would be easier.

stqn · 2012-02-01 13:12:12

You can always run "pacman -Qi | grep <packagename>" and see if it returns something interesting... (and use maybe -B10 to actually see which package needs it.)

ethail · 2012-02-01 13:27:26

stqn wrote:

You can always run "pacman -Qi | grep <packagename>" and see if it returns something interesting.

Do that and you get a bunch of:

Depends On : <packagename>

Last edited by ethail (2012-02-01 19:59:19)

karol · 2012-02-01 13:34:02

expac "%n\n%o\n" -Q

shows that on my system few packages have any opt deps.

yaourt-git
aurvote  customizepkg  rsync  pacman-color

or with optdeps descriptions:

[karol@black ~]$ expac "%n\n%O\n" yaourt-git
yaourt-git
aurvote: vote for your favorite AUR packages  customizepkg: automatically modify PKGBUILD during install/upgrade  rsync: retrieve PKGBUILD from official repositories  pacman-color: fully colorized output

Arch Linux

#1 2012-02-01 04:44:52

Package information -- optional dependencies of?

#2 2012-02-01 05:01:32

Re: Package information -- optional dependencies of?

#3 2012-02-01 12:57:29

Re: Package information -- optional dependencies of?

#4 2012-02-01 13:12:12

Re: Package information -- optional dependencies of?

#5 2012-02-01 13:27:26

Re: Package information -- optional dependencies of?

#6 2012-02-01 13:34:02

Re: Package information -- optional dependencies of?

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