[packagekit] Adding a recursive flag to GetDepends and GetRequires

[Patryk Zawadzki]

2007/11/9, Sebastian Heinlein <glatzor at ubuntu.com>:
> Am Freitag, den 09.11.2007, 13:27 +0100 schrieb Patryk Zawadzki:
> > What about distros where certain packages are split into subpackages
> > with plugins and stuff and what about the common "if I want to install
> > foobrowser, will it pull a ton of crap that stays on my system after I
> > remove foobrowser" scenario?
> >
> > That's how Windows works - you install software, uninstall it and tons
> > of files, services and registry entries remain.
> >
> > Imagine you are a KDE user who wants to try postr, which installs
> > nautilus-python which in turn pulls nautilus depending on the whole
> > GNOME desktop.
> >
> > Now - postr shows it is a 100kb package but installing it takes a
> > whole day on a slow link and in the end shows a nice "disk full" error
> > before even installing anything.
> This should be handeled by the distribution itself. APT, which is used
> in Debian and Ubuntu, can keep track of packages that have been
> installed as a dependency and would remove them if no longer needed.

Debian uses a non-standard package manager. The one used by
LSB-compliant and thus by most distros is RPM. RPM does not track such
data and implementing it somewhere else than in a package manager is a
non-trivial task. RPM in turn allows for pinning packages (a mechanism
similar to Gentoo's world package) that is not supported by
PackageKit.

-- 
Patryk Zawadzki
PLD Linux Distribution