[Slackbuilds-users] Clarification of REQUIRES and dependencies

[B Watson]

On 11/27/14, Willy Sudiarto Raharjo <willysr at slackbuilds.org> wrote:
> in this case, 1 requires 2 AND 3, but 2 already cover 3 in REQUIRES
> if it's indirect, then of course it should not be listed in REQUIRES

A real-world use case: yesterday Ryan posted his proposed update
for scons, asking that we test it with our builds that use scons. If
everything that needs scons lists it in REQUIRES=, all that's needed to
answer the question "what builds depend on scons?" is a simple grep.

Basically the under/over debate doesn't really affect dependency
resolution in the forward direction (either manual or automatic with a
tool like sqg), but it does affect reverse dependency resolution, getting
an answer to the question "what builds depend on the build I'm about to
update?"... Unfortunately a lot of maintainers never ask this question,
and we get maintainer A updating a build that breaks one of maintainer
B's builds, without any notification other than an email from a user
(maybe weeks later) saying "hey, your build is broken".

OK, off my soapbox now, sorry.