In VM only I guess. Just boot from floppy.

If you're not qualified to manage your own system, learn how to become qualified or find someone who already is *able* to do it properly.
From experience, and judging from replies here as well as other similar threads in the past:
Most of us are on this board because we like tools which do what they're told, and not because we want to do what the tool tells us.

Having this imaginary version of pkgtools, which apparently tells us what to do & how to do it, does not make things 'tad easier' for me or any other admin that I know of.
For me personally, it's actually a legit reason to remove those downright malicious pkgtools, and installing standard pkgtools which, traditionally, do what they're told.

Regarding this Debian vs Slackware:
If there is, it's with the user base not the developers. The distributions feed off each other, and the developers tend to like the style/presentation of the OS they develop for and focus on that, not what they don't like about something else (why put your energy into thinking about something you don't like?).

Fair enough. It's not exactly that different from how others have replied to this thread, though, but I guess that could be a result of my original post. Sorry.

Making life easier != not being qualified to manage your own system. It's kinda like saying that using slackpkg to update your system means that you're not qualified to manage your own system because you're not grabbing and installing the packages manually, or that you're not qualified to manage your own system if you don't Slackware from scratch.

This imaginary version of pkgtools doesn't force you to do anything at all; installpkg will say that there are dependencies that it will install, but you can just tell not to by passing a flag (or maybe installpkg should ask if you want to install those packages?), and removepkg won't any of those packages when removing the package that brought them into your system.

Installpkg would not be involved at this stage. Remember the Unix rule? A program should do one thing and do it well. It's not the job of a low-level package manager to ask questions or make decisions. This would be purely a slackpkg option. You could switch it on or off permanently through the configuration file.

If switched on, obviously it would use dialog-box to query the additional installs, just as it does for the package you actually asked for.

1 members found this post helpful.

Oh, yeah, true. I was thinking of a more universal solution that would work for third-party packages, but on second thought, it really doesn't belong in installpkg, yeah.

From https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2750

Well, from what I know, neither RPM or DPKG downloads, installs or removes automatically the given dependencies. Eventually, they yell that the dependencies aren't satisfied.

The ones who did this thing of installing/removing the dependencies are apt-get, or yum or zypper, etc.

So, to keep the analogies regarding what others do, the dependencies resolution itself should be done on slackpkg or slapt-get.

Anyways, I do not think that this dependency resolution will be added to Slackware too soon.

I remember that when I joined this forum years ago, a forum member named Darth Vader argued worth of 40 pages for adding two lines of code on installpkg for registering an eventual information about categories where a package belongs. And by "categories" he expected something like "X11 Applications, Mozilla Software, Web Browsers" for Firefox, for example.

Guess what happened? NOTHING. It was blamed that he wants to introduce the dependencies on Slackware, and accused by trolling.

Because he was a "troll", anyway. In a final, he was banned for life, being reported to death by the angry forum members, because he was trolling about things like adoption of LinuxPAM, elogind, constructive criticism regarding the state of Plasma5 on that time (yes, he was also a Plasma5 tester before it to be adopted) and other things like this.

Believe or not, same people now claims that the future Slackware 15.0 will be a stellar release because that adoption of LinuxPAM and elogind. And Plasma5.

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I don't know what you tried to achieved with your post, really.
Slackware is the Linux distro that is the longest in existence. To you that may mean it is old, and ancient. To me it means it is hugely successful.
Compare Slackware's longevity with the multitude of clones and forks that have withered and been forgotten. Doesn't that tell you something?
Also for a moment consider the users on this forum. Approx 99.99% of THEIR posts are positive about Slackware, i.e. the distro they CHOOSE to use.
What does that tell you?

Please don't say if only Slackware had dependency management is would not be such a borderline distro, etc, etc. 99% of Linux distros use one of about 5 types of dependency control. I would say apart from one distro none are really up there making buckets of money (so even if Slackware had the 'dep problem' solved what then?)

If I were one of the core Slackware Team I may feel insulted by your grandiose first post. Aren't you aware that how we say something carries a ton of implications? Some here have called you a troll. You have denied that. Maybe you are, maybe you're not, but your post was definitely trollish.
Why do you use words like "horribly archaic" (i.e. old, stupid, and obsolete)? and "horrifically large" (i.e. bloated with useless crud)?

How about "Dependency checking really shouldn't be viewed as taboo anymore"?
Now you're implying that the core Slackware Team is politically incorrect because they have a phobia for dependencies?

And then you say: "...despite the fact that all of the BSD ports trees have some sort of dependency checking; even the binary package tools on BSDs have dependency checking!" You're right! and chickens lay eggs, should Slackware also lay eggs?

I'm not often amazed at how people can misjudge things around them but you certainly have big time. what is it about the following you do not understand? Slackware users like Slackware as it is, generally :-).
any changes that have occurred in Slackware's long ancient lifetime have been good, since there are lots of happy users.

By the way we are not all ancient obsolete grey beards. I have a 15yr son who uses Slackware more than I do now and likes it the way it is. He told me about the 'evils' of systemd. :-(

I'll end on a positive note: if you can develop a dependency solution that works for you, then good luck and all the best, but please leave us grey beards to doze blissfully into eternity (while using our fantastic Slackware).

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Note the date!

I don't know what kind of reaction you expected to this: "nostalgic ex-Unix users, curious hobbyists [of which I self-define] and some 4chan and Reddit users who use it to look cool."

Yes, I was happy to welcome you aboard. I'm not ashamed of that. And then you disappeared, only to return a couple of years later and make a (patently wrong) statement like that.
I don't know where you get the idea that Debian and Arch are popular with young people. Ubuntu has double the number of users of all other distros combined, and 70% of those are under age 35 (source). If we were betting on it, I'd lay money on that same demographic preferring Pop!OS to either Debian or Arch.

But as we know, popular does not automatically equate to good. That's why we're here using Linux, yeah?
Can't help yourself can you?

ZhaoLin1457 lets be completely accurate. Anyone who followed Darth's posts and responses recognizes that he is skilled, intelligent, and interesting. However he was also arrogant, sometimes erratically beligerent in an often personally mean, derogatory manner showing no respect for the skills of others, including Mods. Isn't that just begging for trouble? Hasn't anyone ever quoted the old, wise saying to Darth, "One catches more flies with honey than vinegar"?

In short, Darth, AFAIK, was not booted for espousing controversial changes, but for breaking forum rules to which he agreed. That isn't to say he didn't have some good ideas and points, just that he could be very disruptive to numerous threads. I often wonder when I see people here behave erratically and with beligerence if they are among the few who used to be referred to as "drunk dialers". Some drunks are all "You're my buddy, right?" while others are all "Who you looking at? I'll smash your #&%^*%* face!" The latter is undeniably disruptive. I don't know if that applies precisely to Vader, but he did behave like that rather a lot. Cost/Benefit, Brother.

I'd rather nobody ever be banned since we each have the power of "Ignore" but IMHO the mods made a very difficult but basically correct choice and hopefully, Vader might improve his social skills as a result of the consequences.

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That was in reponse to your apparent inability to "manage the system sanely by knowing what depends on what" I mean if you don't know what depends on what then learn what depends on what.
Since I do know what depends on what, I find it difficult to understand what's stopping you from learning what depends on what, that's all.
Really concerned about this because pkgtools is something I use every day.
So I'd prefer that pkgtools stay the same as they are now, and if possible, that you create a new frontend which does exactly what you need while using pkgtools as backend.
That way, you'd still get what you want, and I won't have to work around arbitrary changes in pkgtools which, I assure you, will cause me more trouble than they're worth.
And seriously, if it comes to that, I will not be passing the flag to pkgtools or answering any questions, I'd just find that function in source code and drop it there permanently.

Horrifying thought...but, yes. There's a thing called electricity (we even have it in Oldham) that has to be paid for.

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No, you seem to have misunderstood; I'm criticizing Slackware's lack of any sort of dependency resolution, and to a lesser degree its huge size, and not its age. I don't think Slackware should be rebuilt from the ground up with all of the latest and greatest things.

I have never said that Slackware wouldn't be a borderline distro if it had dependency resolution.

Yes, I agree that it was somewhat grandiose and that I could've definitely phrased it better. I still think it got the point across, though, which is the important bit in the grand scheme of things.

I believe my use of these words are correct; I think that the lack of any sort of dependency resolution is archaic (i.e. antiquated), and I believe that Slackware is quite bloated. Your opinion will differ from this, and that's fine.

Stop politicizing it; it doesn't have anything to do with the issue at hand. The reason why I'm saying that it shouldn't be viewed as something taboo anymore is because most people who use Slackware (at least going by most of the people on here, at least) seem to be completely against any sort of dependency resolution due to fears from

The BSDs are notoriously conservative (arguably more conservative than Slackware in some aspects), and Slackware is arguably very BSD-like in the way it does things, yet the BSDs have simple dependency resolution in their package tools whereas Slackware doesn't. If the BSDs have done it, I don't see why Slackware shouldn't. But hey, that's just my opinion.

Why would dependency resolution of any kind be bad?