[PLUG] Re: What Does "Install" Really Mean

[Tom Diehl <tdiehl@rogueind.com>]

On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, Paul wrote:

> Good example of the use of --nodeps:
> 
> "Beginning with Shorewall 1.4.0, Shorewall is dependent on the iproute 
> package. Unfortunately, some distributions call this package iproute2 
> which will cause the installation of Shorewall to fail with the diagnostic:
> 
>      error: failed dependencies:iproute is needed by shorewall-1.4.x-1
> 
> This may be worked around by using the --nodeps option of rpm (rpm -ivh 
> --nodeps <shorewall rpm>)."

Note the term "workaround". This is not a proper fix.
The maintainer should fix the rpm it is broken.

> 
> http://shorewall.net/Install.htm

I will agree that in the above situation you have a reason and an explanation
for doing this. But....

Think about what happens if you go to install Shorewall and out of habit you
use --nodeps and one of the other deps for Shorewall is missing. Shorewall
will happily install but it might drive you crazy trying to figure out why it
does not work. 

In addition when people advocate this crap, it leads to someone installing a 
package like Shorewall and they see that it works. So the next time that
person has a package that will not install he/she says that worked for 
Shorewall so I guess it is OK to use all of the time. The next thing you
know he/she is whining on some list about how screwed up rpm based systems are.

Just my $.02

..........Tom
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