Policy for Dependencies

[Sune Vuorela]

On 2015-10-13, Martin Graesslin <mgraesslin at kde.org> wrote:
> I'm not sure whether it's the best solution. The problem you try to fix with 
> it is distros breaking packaging. I agree with Martin K that this is a huge 
> problem and that it will happen - since the automation of packages I also 
> experienced that nobody looks at the output of optional dependencies and the 
> packaging breaks.

I do think that such packagers should be slapped around with a large
trout. Or something.

> But I'm not sure how this could be done. Anyway, long story short: I think we 
> need the other way around. It should be optional by default, but should be 
> turned into stricter requirements on the linux distro case.

There is also another angle to the dependencies. What dependencies can
be enabled/disabled without requiring changes to users of the library.

Or put it another way. Is the enabling/disabling of a given feature ABI
and API compatible.

I do think that for features that doesn't impact the API/ABI we should
make it very easy to enable/disable them. Like based on having things
present on the system or not.

But for things that affects the API/ABI of the library, people should be
explicit about it.

/Sune