Jeroen van Meeuwen <kanarip <at> kanarip.com> writes:
Half broken apps because of missing dependencies that are needed for
"extra features" rather then "core functionality" is just bad
programming/app design.
But missing those "extra features" is exactly what I call "half
broken".
I think soft dependencies are a much more admin-friendly way to handle this.
Rex Dieter is working on a proposal there:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RexDieter/SoftDependencies
It'd also have the advantage of not locking users into the
yum/pirut/system-install-packages framework if they wish to use apt-rpm or
smart instead.
And IMHO even a hard dependency is a better approach than a post-install
prompt. Disk space is cheap.
Kevin Kofler