From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 07 May 2014 19:54:20 GMT
Subject: Re: What's cooking in git.git (Apr 2014, #09; Tue, 29)
Message-ID: <536a8f6cd81e9_76ff7a52ec60@nysa.notmuch>
In-Reply-To: <rmiha51dd99.fsf@fnord.ir.bbn.com>

Greg Troxel wrote:
> In a packaging system, dependencies are much more troublesome.
> Dependencies have to be declared, and the build limited to use only
> those declared dependencies, in order to get repeatable builds and
> binary packages that can be used on other systems.  Dependencies that
> really are required are fine.  But optional dependencies are a
> problem, because e.g. one doesn't want to require the presence of qt
> to build something (that isn't already enormous).   So if git needs
> mercurial and subversion installed, plus perhaps 5 other things for
> less popular remote helpers, that starts to be a real burden.

It doesn't *need* them to build. The Mercurial/Bazaar dependencies are
optional, both at build-time and at run-time. Most distributions would
want to test the functionality they are distributing, and for testing
they do need these dependencies.

-- 
Felipe Contreras