Time to abandon recursive pulling of dependencies?

[Ulrich Spoerlein]

Alexander Leidinger wrote:
> Quoting "Ulrich Spoerlein" <uspoerlein at gmail.com> (Wed, 16 May 2007 18:28:55 +0200):
> > > The problem not discussed so far is: some ports may not have all first
> > > order dependencies. So anyone wanting to change this should install a
> > > tinderbox and start testing fixing those ports.
> > 
> > Hmmm, this is a red herring, no? A first order dependency is
> > everything the port specifies in it's _DEPENDS variables. If you
> > change the internal representation of the tree, keeping the transitive
> > hull intact (!!) then there should be no user visible change in how
> > package dependencies are pulled in.
> 
> Yes and no. It is not only about the package dependency, but also about
> a "portupgrade -f" or "bumping all ports which depend directly upon lib
> X".

I see. In theory, we could use the mtime of some file
/var/db/pkg/PKNAME/+FOO to work out what needs rebuilding/reinstalling
(this is just like make(1) does it).

In practice this would lead to way too many false positives, ie.,
unnecessary port rebuilds.

Ulrich Spoerlein
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