Cleaning up stale dependencies

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Feb 25, 2012, at 11:32, Harald Hanche-Olsen wrote:

> Inkscape depends on py27-lxml, but py26-lxml counts inkscape among its
> dependents.
> 
> ; port deps inkscape
> Full Name: inkscape @0.48.2_2+python27
> Build Dependencies:   pkgconfig, intltool, perl5
> Library Dependencies: boehmgc, gsl, gtkmm, gnome-vfs, lcms, poppler, boost,
>                      ImageMagick, libwpg, gtkspell2, py27-lxml, py27-numpy,
>                      py27-xml
> ; port dependents py26-lxml
> inkscape depends on py26-lxml
> 
> From a small amount of poking around, I think there are more instances
> of this phenomenon. If possible, I would like to get rid of python26
> altogether, along with all the py26-* ports. But I don't know if this
> is indeed safe. How can I find out? And why aren't deps and dependents
> simply inverses of each other?

deps and dependencies are conceptual inverses of one another. However the information is recorded in the registry at install time. At the time you installed py26-lxml, it was needed for inkscape. Later (r83781) inkscape changed to use py27-lxml (or rather, changed to give you the option of using python26 or python27) but that did not change py26-lxml's registry entry which still records the fact that inkscape is its dependent, though that's no longer necessarily the case. If you know that no other port needed py26-lxml, feel free to, uninstall it, forcibly (-f) if needed.