[Slackbuilds-users] requirements in README files

Mon Jul 9 22:32:13 UTC 2012

I believe the OP was just suggesting a less ad-hoc way to describe  
build dependencies.

Of course thats not always uncomplicated; nevertheless for some large  
percentage of software, the prerequisite packages required to build  
some new software are quite clear. Why not accommodate these cases?  
Whatever the format for describing the prerequisites, any builder has  
the option of ignoring them.

In my own situation, I add a PREREQUISITES="...." line to the  
SBo's .info file. This can be used (or not) at build time to ensure  
that the prerequisite packages are installed. The parsing & checking  
can be done in the .SlackBuild script itself or, if purity is  
paramount, can be left to a separate wrapper script which parses  
the .info file, checks the prerequisite packages are installed and  
then runs the .SlackBuild.

Yes, "garbage in, garbage out". If the PRERQUISITES field contains  
rubbish, its not useful; but thats also true of anything in existing  
SBo's.

The same really applies for slack-required files too (for runtime  
dependencies). They're not compulsory! /sbin/installpkg & friends  
ignore them; so can everyone else. Why should we prevent SBo authors  
including them and why should we prevent arbitrary users reading them?  
Of course they're useless if they contain bogus information but we  
generally trust SBo authors' scripts to be otherwise well behaved etc.  
There's nothing "dangerous" going on here, just more knowledge. If  
they offend you, don't look.

chris

On 10/07/2012, at 6:56 AM, T3slider wrote:

> See here: http://slackbuilds.org/faq/#deps
> The omission of parsable information is an intentional one as far as I
> know. In order for dependency resolution to come to SBo, there would
> need to be a way of identifying mandatory vs. optional dependencies.
> Additionally, if there is special information regarding a certain
> application or SlackBuild (for example, if a unique user is
> needed/advised to build/run the application) then this would be
> impossible to portray in a parsable format. Significant planning is
> required to produce a good template to follow that provides for all of
> the complications of dependency resolution, and further, another level
> of verification on the behalf of the SBo admins would be required to
> ensure that this information is correct.
>
> slackbuilds.org is not setup to be a do-everything script repository  
> --
> users are expected to read the README files. If you are blindly
> accepting the options given by a dependency resolver, then you likely
> have not read the READMEs and are expecting everything to just work.
> With sbopkg I currently have no need for anything more sophisticated  
> --
> I can read the README for each element, ensure that requirements are
> met, and just add each dependency to a queue. I don't know what you're
> doing but it certainly doesn't take me hours to do, with the possible
> exception of setting up my system after a new Slackware release, which
> requires going through a whole new SBo repository and making sure  
> things
> will work (and waiting for things to compile). And if you really are  
> too
> lazy to read the READMEs there are queuefiles available already.
>
> I maintain only a few SlackBuilds but in those there is information  
> that
> I cannot accurately portray in a standardized format (for example,
> remind has tons of configure options, and a *run-time* dependency that
> may or may not be needed depending on your needs). If you're not  
> reading
> the READMEs for a SlackBuild then you're asking for trouble. Your
> solution may work for trivial software but in the real world  
> dependency
> resolution requires an awful lot of work.
>
> On Mon, Jul 09, 2012 at 03:24:52PM -0500, J wrote:
>> Quoting Doogster <thedoogster at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> You're trying to parse requirements out of README files?
>>>
>>> Are you trying to to write something like Portage for SBo?
>>
>> No, something like FreeBSD's pkgtools:
>>
>> http://dawnrazor.net/sbotools/
>>
>>
>> Quoting Yaroslav Panych <panych.y at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> I am absolutely against of such enforcement. Because next step  
>>> will be
>>> automatic dependency resolver and I don't think somebody wants it.
>>
>> This is a leap of login akin to saying that publicly available
>> condoms will lead to no children being born. I have written the
>> option to parse requirements into sbotools because the current
>> method - look up sbo, find list of requirements, open new tab, look
>> up requirement, find list of requirements, etc etc, is a usability
>> and sanity failure. The fact is that the sort of consistency in the
>> READMEs in which I'm interested is good for the users who don't care
>> to utilize such an option as well, because it's easier to identify -
>> pattern recognition, basic human interface to the world.
>>
>>> think it will bring more harm than profit. I know how hard to
>>> determinate requirements manually, but I sure it worth to do. It  
>>> will
>>> filter noobs aside(less noobs - less maintainers headache, less
>>> maintainers headache - better maintainer work).
>>
>> Requirements would still be determined manually. The only change I
>> am proposing is consistency in documenting them.
>>
>> Quoting Hullen at t-online.de (Helmut Hullen):
>>
>>> The README is created from the author/maintainer of the program.  
>>> The SBO
>>> maintainer should not change it.
>>
>> And yet, other parts of slackbuilds will get changed by maintainers.
>>
>>>> This requires perl-Params-Validate, perl-DateTime-Locale,
>>>> perl-DateTime-TimeZone, perl-Test-Exception, perl-Sub-Uplevel
>>>> perl-Math-Round.
>>>
>>> That's another problem - these informations should be put into  
>>> "install/
>>> slack-required". And that could be a job for the SBO maintainer.
>>
>> These would be a valid solution, but I'm not sure it makes a lot of
>> sense, personally. It not only duplicates the data, but I'm
>> apparently the only person who is dead sick and tired of crawling
>> through 20 tabs of slackbuilds to get the requirements together for
>> a single one, and who doesn't feel that sbopkg and queue files are a
>> solution that fits the problem. And that's fine, and doesn't warrant
>> an individual file - though it would be nice. But consistency
>> amongst READMEs is easy to achieve, better for usability, and as
>> noted, there is already a precedent since other files will get
>> edited.
>>
>> J
>>
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Christoph Willing              +61 7 3365 8316
Research Computing Centre
University of Queensland