FS#26722 - Add Method to Exclude Deps of Packages When Not Needed

Attached to Project: Pacman
Opened by Matt (ilikenwf) - Wednesday, 02 November 2011, 22:20 GMT
Last edited by Dan McGee (toofishes) - Tuesday, 22 November 2011, 04:34 GMT
Task Type Feature Request
Category General
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version 3.5.4
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

So basically, say you use XFCE4 and don't have GNOME2 installed, and you need to install gpointing-device-settings from AUR. When you do so, it requires gnome-settings-daemon, which in turn requires gnome-desktop and pulseaudio. Pulseaudio conflicts on my setup with alsa in several ways.

I have already used pacman -Rdd to remove the offending pulseaudio packages, but to avoid dependency hell and autioinstallation when I eventually do a pacman -Syu, it would be nice to have an extra parameter for makepkg and pacman like a remove=() array or something, in which someone can specify secondary and onward dependencies that the package doesn't actually need...it would eliminate cruft and in my case prevent me from needing to install freaking pulseaudio to configure my touchpad.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Dan McGee (toofishes)
Tuesday, 22 November 2011, 04:34 GMT
Reason for closing:  Won't implement
Additional comments about closing:  Packaging issue- we can't sanely support any sort of missing dependencies, it just doesn't work.
Comment by Dan McGee (toofishes) - Wednesday, 02 November 2011, 22:49 GMT
This sounds like a packaging issue. If something isn't truly a required depend, it should be in optdepends.
Comment by Matt (ilikenwf) - Wednesday, 02 November 2011, 22:51 GMT
Perhaps, in which case I should be talking to the maintainer of gnome-settings-daemon, I guess. It doesn't actually require gnome-desktop or pulseaudio. I have a feeling its setup that way to make installing gnome lazier.

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