Hi I am part of a team which is working on the development of a Linux distribution (such as SUSE), as part of the European EDOS project (http://www.edos-project.org). We have developed some tools to manage package dependencies which you may find useful. For example, anla (http://brion.inria.fr/anla/), a package exploration utility to spot and to trace dependency problems over time (currently working with a Debian package pool). anla depends on other tools such as ceve, a parser written in ocaml for deb, rpm and other files, and a SAT solver. One of the goals of the EDOS project is to maintain a set of packages on the server side (avoiding dependency issues), but we are also interested in "thinning" a distribution, that is producing a Linux "CD" (for example) containing a requested set of packages, and the minimal set of packages which are necessary to complete the dependency requirements, nothing more. Another interest of ours is the rebuilding of a distribution from scratch, in such a way that a user can reproduce the binaries shipped to him by using only the sources coming with them. The EDOS project also deals with the diffusion of the package (a P2P system is under development) and the testing domain (a portal is also being developed). We would like to know about the issues you may face in your build management project and we would be glad to bring our expertise. We also want to ensure that our tools will work for the SUSE user. All the best, Marc Lijour