port reclaim exclude build dependencies

[Jonathan Stickel]

On 1/23/19 02:00 , Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> 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
> 

Yes, thank you for your remarks. The `port_cutleaves` tool can already 
do this, and so I presume some code can be borrowed from it. I do not 
know who the original developer was, and it currently has no maintainer.

I could try my hand to help implement. Realistically, I will not have 
time for a couple months. I'll check back then if there has been no 
other movement.

Jonathan