Re: ghostscript meta package

[David Sainty <dave%dtsp.co.nz@localhost>]

David Holland <dholland-pkgtech%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:

>On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 08:27:27PM +1200, Steven Drake wrote:
> > Does anyone have a problem with changing the way the 
>> ghostscript-agpl/ghostscript-gpl is selected to use a meta-package
>named
> > 'ghostscript' that depends on one of them.
> > 
>> This basically reverts the way that ghostscript depends, buildlinks
>and
> > the gs section of mk/tools/replace.mk work to what they where before
> > the two packages existed (Sorry dholland@).
>
>What I'd worry about is what version number the meta-package is going
>to have, and what happens to the dependencies when the two packages
>cease to be fully interchangeable. This is bound to happen eventually.
>

This should be okay.  If a package depends specifically on one or the other, it 
should (directly or indirectly) include the specific required package rather 
than the meta package. Conflicts should take care of the rest.  The meta 
package's version won't matter too much.

I'm not a big fan of the by-licence selection though, given that it essentially 
defaults to the less-maintained version, and it's extending the licence 
functionality to new ground - elsewhere licensing settings don't change the 
package set on the machine, but here they do. That could be seen as abuse.

(I admit that it could also be usefully seen as reducing the barrier to getting 
Pkgsrc packages up and running for new users)