[packagekit] Adding a recursive flag to GetDepends and GetRequires

[Richard Hughes]

On Fri, 2007-11-09 at 13:27 +0100, Patryk Zawadzki wrote:
> 2007/11/8, Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com>:
> > I do understand why some distros might want this "feature". For example
> > if you were installing epiphany and the transaction was forced to remove
> > galeon, i.e. the update or install removes other software that the user
> > may care about.
> 
> 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.

Sure, but that's a backend problem. yum can do this with a plugin.

> 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.

You could argue that's a packaging bug.

> 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.

Well, the backend should calculate the total size and error out if this
is bigger than the current disk space. User's don't know this; heck,
even I don't know how much free space I have left on /.

Richard.