Dependency classes and allowed dependency types

In my previous post I have described a number of pitfalls regarding Gentoo dependency specifications. However, I have missed a minor point of correctness of various dependency types in specific dependency classes. I am going to address this in this short post.

There are three classes of dependencies in Gentoo: build-time dependencies that are installed before the source build happens, runtime dependencies that should be installed before the package is installed to the live system and ‘post’ dependencies which are pretty much runtime dependencies whose install can be delayed if necessary to avoid dependency loops. Now, there are some fun relationships between dependency classes and dependency types.

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Dependency pitfalls regarding slots, slot ops and any-of deps

During my work on Gentoo, I have seen many types of dependency pitfalls that developers fell in. Sad to say, their number is increasing with new EAPI features — we are constantly increasing new ways into failures rather than working on simplifying things. I can’t say the learning curve is getting much steeper but it is considerably easier to make a mistake.

In this article, I would like to point out a few common misunderstandings and pitfalls regarding slots, slot operators and any-of (|| ()) deps. All of those constructs are used to express dependencies that can be usually be satisfied by multiple packages or package versions that can be installed in parallel, and missing this point is often the cause of trouble.

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On good metadata.xml maintainer descriptions

Since GLEP 67 was approved, bug assignment became easier. However, there were still many metadata.xml files which made this suboptimal. Today, I have fixed most of them and I would like to provide this short guide on how to write good metadata.xml files.

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bugs.gentoo.org: bug assignment UserJS

Since time does not permit me to write in more extent, just a short note: yesterday, I have published a Gentoo Bugzilla bug assignment UserJS. When enabled, it automatically tries to find package names in bug summary, fetches maintainers for them (from packages.g.o) and displays them in a table with quick assignment/CC checkboxes.

Note that it’s still early work. If you find any bugs, please let me know. Patches will be welcome too. And some redesign, since it looks pretty bad, standard Bugzilla style applied to plain HTML.

Update: now on GitHub as bug-assign-user-js