On Tuesday, 16 October 2007, at 09:05:50 (-0400),
Jeff Johnson wrote:

>  The generated dependency may well be
>      Requires: foo = V
>  but there are problems no matter how a package only dependency is generated.

It's still imprecise.  The whole point of a dependency is to quantify
the answer to the question, "What must a system have to make this
software work?"  And shared library dependencies based on major
SOVERSION are a far more precise answer to that question than package
dependencies because that's how the dynamic linker works.

(Not that you don't know this...just illustrating why package-only
dependencies are not a sufficient replacement for shlib dependencies.)

Perhaps if the package deps were turned into "Requires(hint): foo"
instead?  That would give the depsolvers something to key from without
losing the precision of the shared library versioning.  Just something
to say, "Hey, you most likely need 'foo' for this package."

Michael

-- 
Michael Jennings (a.k.a. KainX)  http://www.kainx.org/  <mej@kainx.org>
Linux Server/Cluster Admin, LBL.gov       Author, Eterm (www.eterm.org)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 "She'd still say, 'I love you' if I asked, but she never volunteers.
  Somehow what she never says means more than all the other words I
  hear."                     -- BlackHawk, "I Sure Can Smell the Rain"