port reclaim exclude build dependencies

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2019 at 16:36, Jonathan Stickel wrote:
>
> > 2. You can exercise judgment in doing a 'port setrequested' for some
> > common dependency ports that you know you will always want (e.g.
> > autoconf, boost, ncurses, etc.) and avoid having to save no regularly.
>
> This takes work that could be automated. If there isn't interest, OK,
> I'll keep doing what I'm doing.

I'm aware that the number of developers with both the skill and time
to fix this is very limited, so I don't consider it some ultra high
priority, but I would also be in favour of "keeping track of build
dependencies". That is: if I installed port A on my computer and if A
installed autoconf (as a build dependency) as well as B as runtime
dependency, I would like to have the ability to keep autoconf
installed after running reclaim, in the same way as B is kept. Of
course this would have to be optional, so that it would be equally
easy to remove build dependencies as it would be keeping them.

(A particular port might have been fetched from the buildbot, or built
locally, and MacPorts could in theory treat those two cases
differently, so that it would only keep the build dependencies of
ports you'll likely need to build again. But that's already nitpicking
and probably not really needed.)

Debian tells you about dependencies you may remove immediately after
uninstalling a particular package.

Mojca