Questions on dependencies

[Craig Treleaven]

At 4:27 PM +0100 11/1/13, Clemens Lang wrote:
>On Fri, Nov 01, 2013 at 10:27:04AM +1100, Joshua Root wrote:
>>  If they are needed at build time and runtime, use depends_lib. If they
>>  are only needed at runtime, use depends_run.
>
>is there any difference between listing a package in both depends_build
>and depends_run compared to just listing it in depends_lib, e.g. in how
>licensing stuff propagates?
>
>Since MacPorts ensures depends_run dependencies are installed before
>attempting to build a package, we usually do not notice a depends_run
>dependency that should rather be depends_build.
>
>I'm currently trying to improve trace mode to a point where every
>package I have installed builds fine using trace mode and I've come
>across the gcc ports, which set
>   depends_run port:ld64 port:cctools
>but fail to configure when trace mode (correctly) hides files installed
>by these ports. I wonder whether the correct fix would be to convert
>those into depends_lib, or just add them as depends_build, too.

I was playing with egall's port-depcheck.sh script:

https://github.com/cooljeanius/macportsscripts/blob/v0.1.4/port-depcheck.sh

It identified several interesting things in my MythTV ports that I 
hadn't known before--including a couple more opportunistic links 
(Myth is so promiscuous!).

A couple of questions for the more-experienced here.

Myth includes Perl and Python bindings that need a number of 
dependencies to work (eg port:${pymodver}-mysql, 
port:${perlmodver}-dbd-mysql, etc).  I have these listed as 
depends_lib but no Myth binaries link directly to them.  Is it 
advantageous to list them instead as depends_run?

egall's script says that Myth does not link directly to 
qt4-mac-${mysqlver}-plugin but does link directly to qt4-mac.  Again, 
are there advantages to showing qt4-mac as a depends_lib but the 
plugin as a depends_run?

I'm not a professional developer; just trying to understand a little more.

Thanks,

Craig