Arch Linux

I can't see any harm in it. If I end up packaging a browser I'll do it.

Can you give an example?

This might be better for tags, although I don't know how that would work in relation to depends.

Which packages need that?

actually no one directly (afaik). just wanted to add webbrowser to an optdepends array for penguintv.
so this idea came me to mind. "... _need_ a browser for proper use" is exaggerated.

-1 for this feature request until there will be a _real_ need.

@ Daenyth: an implementation of tags is being considered for future pacman versions, but will not be done with provides array.

I don't think this is a bad idea; however, I'm not sure if it would be as useful as it seems out of the box unless Arch ships some sort of /usr/bin/webbrowser script or something along those lines.

I think if it was needed as an actual 'depends', it would be a bit more critical than the 'optdepends' usage mentioned here.

Maybe we should add "computer" to the list of depends as well.

I don't like adding this either. What's next? Adding texteditor provides to gedit, abiword, openoffice, vim, emacs, etc? Adding mailclient to thunderbird, evolution, mutt, seamonkey, etc?

oh, it's still alive.
"I'm not sure if it would be as useful as it seems out of the box unless Arch ships some sort of /usr/bin/webbrowser script or something along those lines."
my idea was to use the provide entry as a replacement for meta-scripts, -packages. sometime it may come in handy.
however, it's not that important and can get cluttered very fast, so it's ok to omit this.