Re: [Bug: 21.5-b29] packages UI: non-ideal handling of missing deps

Samuel Bronson writes:  > I've been running into a lot of those "Cannot open load file: "  > messages. I recommend that you simply install everything in the XEmacs SUMO package, and if you use non-Latin-1 characters much, the Mule SUMO package as well.  > I've just realized that this is probably because the package  > management UI does not check dependancies unless explicitly  > requested to do so; it would probably be a good idea to have an  > option (defaulting to on) to have it do this automatically at the  > beginning of `pui-install-selected-packages' (aka "x"). If the  > check fails, the user should probably have a choice between  > "include dependancies", "ignore dependancies", and "cancel". This doesn't do all that much good; the dependencies are build-time dependencies, which means "anything we might want to inline when compiling."  Ie, typically the dependencies recorded are precisely the dependencies you don't actually need!  (In practice, it's not quite that bad, but you will definitely get some packages you don't need and not get some packages you do need.) It's actually quite difficult to analyze the dependencies in Lisp, because of features like autoloads, so that the declaration of the dependency is in the *required* file, not in the *requiring* file. Several attempts have been made, but nobody has ever followed through.