Find dependencies quietly?

[Alex Merry]

On 02/02/14 07:27, Stephen Kelly wrote:
> On 02/02/2014 12:45 AM, Alex Merry wrote:
>> The obvious thing to do is set a package property (or something
>> equivalent) that says it was found as a dependency.  The danger there is
>> that if something is first found as a dependency and then found
>> explicitly, it will be supressed.  We could minimise that by also
>> checking that the TYPE and PURPOSE package properties were not set.
> 
> What I was getting at is a new TRANSITIVE_DEPEND package TYPE.
> 
> Existing docs:
> 
> #     SET_PACKAGE_PROPERTIES(<name> PROPERTIES [ URL <url> ]
> #                                              [ DESCRIPTION <description> ]
> #                                              [ TYPE
> (RUNTIME|OPTIONAL|RECOMMENDED|REQUIRED) ]
> 
> # If set_package_properties() is called multiple times for the same
> # package with different TYPEs, the TYPE is only changed to higher TYPEs
> # ( RUNTIME < OPTIONAL < RECOMMENDED < REQUIRED ),
> 
> Investigate whether what you want is a separate, similar logic which can
> 'upgrade' a TRANSITIVE_DEPEND to REQUIRED. Separate because (RECOMMENDED
> < TRANSITIVE_DEPEND) is not true.

I would be inclined to say that TRANSITIVE_DEPEND should be below
RUNTIME, so that any other dependency type overrides it.  Either that,
or have it as a completly orthogonal property that nevertheless
interacts with TYPE, but I think that's overcomplicating matters.

feature(WHAT ALL) should implicitly exclude transitive deps, in the same
way it implicitly excludes QUIET deps (although I'd be inclined to omit
the override that QUIET has unless and until someone demands it).

Alex