[mono-packagers] [Mono-dev] mono-find-(provides|requires)

[Mike Kestner]

On Fri, 2008-12-12 at 08:56 -0700, Andrew Jorgensen wrote:

> I don't know how best to solve this issue but it needs to be solved.
> As more mono-based packages are added to linux distributions the
> problem will grow.  Please share your well-reasoned ideas and / or
> proposed patches.

We seem to have 3 classes of DLLs now: gac, addin, and private.

gac is obvious:  Anything that installs one provides it, anything that
references one requires it.

private is any installed non-gac assembly which is not associated with
addins.  This includes local libraries installed by apps for their own
use, and unstable libraries using the guidelines per the wiki.  There is
no reason for these libraries to be advertised as provides.

The tricky one is addin-related libraries, like MonoDevelop.Core.dll
which is consumed by Boo.  These are loaded via the addin manifest
dependency mechanism so they don't have to be installed in the GAC to be
public. 

>From a package dependency standpoint, any assembly reference not
installed by the rpm itself needs to be listed by mono-find-requires.
For mono-find-provides, gac and addin assemblies need to be listed.
Gac libraries are easy enough to identify.  Lluis and I were discussing
it and he said it should be possible to extend the addin tools to
provide an addin detection capability.

-- 
Mike Kestner <mkestner at gmail.com>