On 5 Feb 2000, Martin J. Laubach wrote:

> If an optional dependency is included, register it in the
> package db, if not, well, don't. (Well, perhaps a way to turn
> off present, but unwanted optional dependencies would be good?)
> 
> To cater for bulk builds, one could introduce a "REQUIRE_OPTIONAL"

This was explored earlier in the ``gimp requires emacs'' thread that
starts here:

 http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-pkg/1999/05/03/0000.html

The issue in that thread is subtly different, but might help to inform
this discussion.  IIRC that thread was resolved fairly conclusively, and
got me thinking about what's the right way to run a packages collection
smoothly.

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