From gentoo-dev  Fri Aug 08 19:34:33 2014
From: Peter Stuge <peter () stuge ! se>
Date: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 19:34:33 +0000
To: gentoo-dev
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] minimalistic emerge
Message-Id: <20140808193433.25388.qmail () stuge ! se>
X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=gentoo-dev&m=140752648225216

Kent Fredric wrote:
> dependencies are forward specifications from upstream telling
> us what their software needs to function properly.

Unfortunately that's not the full story. :\

ebuilds often (for me) have artificial dependencies, when the actual
version required is too old to be in the tree, but maybe not too old
to be installed on an existing system.

I think it's bad policy to lie about dependencies in ebuilds for the
sole reason of only ever depending on versions which actually exist
in the same snapshot. It's a too simplistic model of reality.


//Peter