Slackware-current unmet dependancies + how to report?
 

Hi all, I happily run Slackware-current on one of my hosts but, though rarely, I find missing dependencies. For instance, today I fixed:

1 - Apache module for PHP7 prevents HTTPD from starting, because libsodium is missing
(just do slackpkg install libsodium)

2 - nslookup command needs missing libedit
(just do slackpkg install libedit)

Whom shoud I write to, of the Slackware addresses, if I want to report such small issues?

If you were able to install them with slackpkg, it means they exist in the distribution, but they were missing in your install. This most likely occurred because you forgot to run slackpkg install-new before you ran slackpkg upgrade-all.

Running upgrade-all will only update the existing packages if any newer versions are present. install-new will add any new programs, and clean-system will uninstall any programs that were removed (be sure to blacklist your 3rd-party packages from slackpkg so clean-system doesn't remove them). All should be a part of your upgrade process when running -current.

I'd highly recommend running slackpkg install-new now to see what other programs you might be missing, and slackpkg clean-system to get rid of all the packages that are no longer a part of Slackware.

that most probably happens because you usually don't install the new packages added to the current tree but you just upgrade the existing ones: if you use slackpkg, the correct set of commands to use at every update is
you are probably missing the second one.
the last should be issued with great care because, with the default configuration, it will remove every third party package you have installed (thing that maybe you don't want), but it's used commonly to uninstall packages removed from the slackware tree (like "man", that has been recently substituted by man-db).

EDIT: bassmadrigal has been faster!

Further to the excellent, previous posts I like to run this command the first time I'm updating -current then follow with the other commands in order.

Thanks everybody
 

Thanks for the replies, I always installaed packages on a per-need basis and missed this apparently obvious fact!

hmmm.. I have never run clean-system. How important is that step? Is it just to keep things neat or is not doing so possibly going to cause an issue?

edit: I just searched and there seem to be mixed opinions on how often to run clean-system.

It probably depends on the reason why Pat removed the package(s) in the first place. Usually, it probably doesn't hurt to keep them, but I'm sure there are exceptions.

As a note of caution, clean-system will also select any third-party packages you have installed, unless you have blacklisted them, so be careful.

Thanks.

I wonder if someone has created a script to add all 3rd party packages directly to the blacklist? I tried a search but didn't come up with anything. That would be handy.

edit: Doh.. I just realized I added the following to blacklist to take care of the problem lol

I normally install most 3rd party packages from SBo or alien so I should be safe to run clean-system.

I just did a trial run and it didn't want to remove the SBo or Alien packages but there were quite a few official packages that it wanted to delete. Probably 25 or so...

Basically, this will remove any packages not in the official tree (unless it is blacklisted). This could be packages that were removed (no longer needed, replaced by a different program, consolidated into another program, no longer works, etc) or 3rd-party packages that aren't blacklisted. You could search the changelog and see if there were any notes on the removal. That could give insight on why it was removed.

While it isn't always important to remove programs that have been removed from Slackware, sometimes it's very important, like in the 14.2 development when we moved from udev to eudev. Had you left udev in the system, it probably would've conflicted with eudev and caused you problems. Also, if the switch gets thrown on KDE5/Plasma5, you'll want to clean the system of any KDE4 remnants to prevent conflicts (I don't think they coexist together anymore).

Just find the 3rd-party packages you use and ensure you blacklist the tags (most people just need SBo and alien tags), then you should be good to go to run clean-system without issue :)