[Slackbuilds-users] "Required" package listing in .info ?

[John Doe]

Hello all,

I am (probably not alone ;-) ) benefiting from the quite stable quality
of the packages produced from the SBo scripts. Taken  this measure of
reliability we've all learned to know and love I even produced (maybe
I'm not alone here either) some layer of automation based on the scripts
("one touch build", ftp + wget + build).

Now, all the above said, let me step on the thin ice (and please note
beforehand that I am a long term Slack user and I'm aware of the general
opinion on the automated dependency resolution and package management).

I would like to check the opinion of the list members & SBo's core crew
on the inclusion of machine readable information about packages required
to build a given packages. This information is customarily provided in
the README description (which is widely appreciated, I believe ;-) ) so
it seems only logical to have it included in the PACKAGE.info file as well.

I would propose to amend the guideline governing the format of .info
files (as made available on SBo http://slackbuilds.org/guidelines ) with
something like:

REQUIRES=("package1" "package2" ... "packageX")

where package[1..X] is defined as
	1.) either the name of the package as provided by SBo if such package
is available
	2.) or the package name as provided by the source distributor if there
is no SBo build for it

Packages provided by stock Slack issue should not be listed here (as
they are usually not mentioned in the README either ).


This format will readily enable it's inclusion into "sh" based tools by
source or eval of the .info file (as is case at the moment)

My $0.02

Take care
Koolniczka