slackpkg option for dependencies
 

I was just thinking about dependency resolution whilst I was browsing around sbopkg and I thought if I can type

$ slackpkg info <packagename>

for a little read up, it would be quite handy to type

$ slackpkg requires <packagename>

to get a list of dependencies.

I realise of course there are various ways to get this information anyway but this would be a nice addition.

I think it would be too much extra work.

Slackware assumes that you do a full installation, so no need for dependency checking as all the hard dep has been installed in your system

The slackpkg tool is for administering the official portion of your Slackware install. All dependencies are met within the recommended full install. I do not see a use case.

[edit]Too slow![/edit]

To do that, one would need that dependencies be recorded in the packages' database (/var/log/packages), but this is not the case.

I forgot about the old slackware 'if you don't do a full install you're on your own' and I have a fairly basic install here. I'm sure a lot of people these days though skip kde* on install and just run with xfce or if you were maybe resurrecting an old pc or laptop and wanted to run with just fluxbox or something. Maybe it would help but I'm not a coder so maybe it is too difficult or too much work which is fair enough and I understand that.

Not sure how sbopkg do it, obviously it's a lot different to slackpkg and running from different packages in a different repository, but if I do:

sbopkg -s <packagename>

it's all there.

Sbopkg does it by using sqg
http://slackblogs.blogspot.com/2014/...es-easily.html

but sqg must be initialized first or after a new public update by SBo team

There's metadata associated with each slackbuild that has that information in it. It's the package_name.info file, which contains something like (taking 14.1's libvirt SlackBuild as an example):
If you really want that functionality, then you should consider using slapt-get as well as one of the slapt-get repositories where someone's done that analysis for a standard slackware distribution. Like this one (look at the contents of PACKAGES.TXT at the link).

Alternative: Just use a tool specifically written to show dependencies for Slackware packages: https://bitbucket.org/a4z/sbbdep/wiki/Home

That will work in a majority of the cases (probably a vast majority of them).

If you need something that isn't binary from another package, you're pretty much stuck with someone documenting that fact in some location that a program can read and understand. Data files for games and python/perl/scheme/ruby/whatever scripts come to mind.

According to Matteo Rossini (zerouno, on Alien BOB's blog), the following works with some third party repositories using slackpkg+:

Also, there is slackyd, though I haven't tested it.

Why not follow the recommended procedure? Why not install KDE even if you plan to use Xfce as your WM? What do you hope to gain by a basic install except hard drive space?

That works nicely, thanks.

I'll certainly look in to slackpkg+, looks interesting, thanks.

slackyd was almost there but the last lines of the info were:

> Package conflict with: not available.
> Packages suggest: not available.
> Packages required: not available.

for whichever package I queried.