Re: apt-get/yum like dependency installation in autotool

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 10/23/2012 06:19 PM, Hartmut Holzgraefe wrote:
> On 23.10.2012 18:05, Rudra Banerjee wrote:
> > I don't  know if this is asking too much from autotools, but is it anyway 
> > possible to install missing dependency files via autotools?
> > say, in my program, I use libsoup as
> > #include <libsoup/soup.h>
> >
> > is it possible for autotools to install libsoup if it is missing?
>
> How many different package systems are there?

They are like mushrooms, once you've counted them, another one grows 
somewhere else.

> I'll just name BSD ports
> besides the apt-get and yum you already mentioned ...

zypper on SUSE, some mingw variants have some "mingw-get", windows in 
general doesn't have any, ... how about Solaris, Android, iOS, MacOSx, 
cygwin, slackware, Gentoo ... or (insert OS to be launched in future) ... ?

Also, there usually isn't only one tool which can be utilized to query a 
package database, there are several.

> And how do you find out which package the file is in?

Manually, using the tools the OS I am using provides?

More generally speaking, "package-dep checking" is part of the routine 
jobs "packaging"/"system-integration" consists of.

> Ok, apt-cache
> search for Debian based distros, don't know enough about yum ...

On Fedora, you usually use "repoquery" to query yum databases.


> But then again: what if different packages provide the same file?
> E.g. due to different parallel versions, or for libraries due to
> mixed 32/64bit setups, or the right version may actually only
> be available in a custom ppa: yet and not in the mainline repos ...
Not worth mentioning the dynamics of dependencies.

Libraries may move between packages, libraries may be removed/replaced 
by others. Packages may move between repositories and repositories may 
even vanish.

> If at all i'd let configure print "you *may* want to install the
> xyz package first", but any automatic action would actually scare
> me ...

Like others already said, this is far beyond the scope of the autotools.

Ralf