Boolean dependencies for RPM

[hakman]

This feature is quite new, but will be very useful to have in the near future:
http://rpm.org/user_doc/boolean_dependencies.html

Weak dependencies (recommends and suggests) would also be nice to have:
http://rpm.org/user_doc/dependencies.html

[EarthCitizen]

I was just looking at how to do that, and I see that it is not yet implemented. I am in a situation that needs weak dependencies.

[danmx]

😈 dump, +1

[9point6]

Weak dependencies would be a nice addition given the support for --deb-recommends

[nook24]

I'm interested in this as well

[gkralik]

This is already possible, but not obvious.

When using the fpm CLI, include a --rpm-tag 'Suggests: <CAPABILITY>' parameter.

Using the API, just add it to the :rpm_tag attribute:

rpm_package.attributes[:rpm_tag] = "Suggests: <CAPABILITY>"

Instead of Suggests also one of Enhances, Supplements or Enhances can be used, depending on the use case.

[nook24]

It is worth mentioning that if you want to use weak dependencies with an RPM repository you HAVE TO USE https://github.com/rpm-software-management/createrepo_c to create the repository. Otherwise weak dependencies will not work.

Thanks to @gkralik I was able to build an rpm which recommends another rpm via fpm using --rpm-tag "Recommends: pkg-b"

[root@localhost ~]# LANG=c dnf install pkg-a
Failed to set locale, defaulting to C.UTF-8
Last metadata expiration check: 0:00:33 ago on Sun Oct 17 17:51:08 2021.
Dependencies resolved.
======================================================================================================
 Package          Architecture      Version               Repository                             Size
======================================================================================================
Installing:
 pkg-a            x86_64            1.0.5-1               foo.lan_rpm_            6.0 k
Installing weak dependencies:
 pkg-b            x86_64            1.0.5-1               foo.lan_rpm_            5.9 k

Transaction Summary
======================================================================================================
Install  2 Packages

Total download size: 12 k
Installed size: 51
Is this ok [y/N]:

You can use rpm to check if the packges got add to recommends and requires:

[17:57]root@build~# rpm -qp /tmp/pkg-a_1.0.5.x86_64.rpm --recommends --requires
pkg-b
basesystem
rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1
rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1

You can also query the --recommends from the repo:

[root@localhost ~]# LANG=c dnf repoquery --recommends pkg-a
Failed to set locale, defaulting to C.UTF-8
Last metadata expiration check: 0:07:19 ago on Sun Oct 17 17:51:08 2021.
pkg-b

If you get an empty list at this point, than the RPM repository was most likely created using the old python createrepo command instead of createrepo_c.

This took me a couple of hours to figure out.

Full fpm commands (Just for reference)

fpm --verbose --debug-workspace -s tar -t rpm -n pkg-a -p /tmp/pkg-a_1.0.5.x86_64.rpm -v 1.0.5 --license GPLv3 --maintainer 'a' --description "pkg a" --architecture x86_64 --depends basesystem --rpm-tag "Recommends: pkg-b" /root/pkg-a.tar.gz


fpm --verbose -s tar -t rpm -n pkg-b -p /tmp/pkg-b_1.0.5.x86_64.rpm -v 1.0.5 --license GPLv3 --maintainer 'b' --description "pkg b" --architecture x86_64 --depends basesystem  /root/pkg-b.tar.gz