[Slackbuilds-users] OPTIONAL field [was: qemu/spice-gtk and usbredir]

[Arnaud]

> On 25/10/16 03:12, Christoph Willing wrote:
> >> Exactly, it's for the build tools. They can store externally what
> >> optional packages have been chosen and work according to that.
> >>
> > Could you give a small example of how you see that working? It seems
> > like there would be yet another layer of configuration needed (albeit as
> > part of the build tool setup, I guess) to distinguish between all the
> > possible optional packages and those that a user may want to actually use.
> >
> > I'm not trying to be contrary (I mentioned previously that I already use
> > additional .info fields myself); just interested.
> >
> > chris
> 
> It would require a deeper thought, because there are potentially more 
> interesting things to take into account.
> 
> But my first idea is that, the automated tool would offer you / ask you 
> what optional packages do you want. It would then remember your choice, 
> and could also track any possible changes to the upstream OPTIONAL 
> field, and if there was a change, ask you again.
> 
> Of course you could just edit some config file to contain all the 
> optional packages, but what we're talking about here is to let the 
> machine assist you in doing so, and tracking for possible 
> misconfiguration (e.g. the tool can detect that you have a package 
> flagged as optional, but upstream has changed .info and removed that 
> package from OPTIONAL field).

	It could also, more basically, just pop that there are optional
dependencies, and ask you to take steps manually.

	I don't re-read every README each time I rebuild a package, and I don't
keep track of which packages have optional dependencies.
Sometimes there is a %README% listed as a REQUIRE (like in ffmpeg.info), but not
always (openbox, nothing in REQUIRE, but imlib2 is optional).
	It is actually hard to keep track of wether I built a package with an
optional dependency. Having a list of optional package would help, as I could
look at which ones are installed already, which ones are out of date, and take
care of all that before rebuilding a given package.

	I have actually a special script to handle ffmpeg, which reports
installed dependencies, check their up-to-date status, and build ffmpeg with my
options. Because it's too big a mess otherwise ^^

 - Arnaud.