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Description of problem:
It's currently not possible to specify weak dependencies for packages, which makes it difficult to deal with optional dependencies.
Currently, the recommended approach is either to make them mandatory (i.e. Requires) or to not specify them at all. Both approaches are terrible for obvious reasons.
Could we have the weak dependency tags backported from RPM 4.12 to RHEL 7 RPM such that packages can be built with them and RPM can process them? That would also offer parity with SLE 12 RPM 4.11, which offers this functionality, and make it easier for packages from Fedora to be built for RHEL in EPEL.
Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
4.11.3-25.el7
The issue here is that we do not support weak deps in yum properly and adding support in rpmbuild might give the impression that weak deps are actually fully supported through out RHEL 7. I am closing this here.
From a technical POV adding the support should be pretty easy (We are talking about weak dependencies only - not boolean dependencies).
Created attachment 1513521[details]
Patch from SUSE to add weak deps support to YUM
(In reply to Florian Festi from comment #3)
> The issue here is that we do not support weak deps in yum properly
This is supported in yum git master currently (it works in Fedora and Mageia yum-deprecated).
If you want a more specific patch, SUSE has a patch that can be adapted, which I've attached.
And we now have DNF in RHEL 7, which supports it too.
> adding support in rpmbuild might give the impression that weak deps are
> actually fully supported through out RHEL 7. I am closing this here.
>
With the attached patch, it could be...
> From a technical POV adding the support should be pretty easy (We are
> talking about weak dependencies only - not boolean dependencies).
Yeah, we don't really want to go down the ugly road of boolean dependencies...
(In reply to Neal Gompa from comment #4)
> This is supported in yum git master currently (it works in Fedora and Mageia
> yum-deprecated).
While it's true that the upstream version of yum does have support for weak deps, we're not planning on backporting it to RHEL-7 at this point. It's just too many changes and we don't want to risk regressions.