Richard Bos <radoeka@xs4all.nl> [Sun, 9 Nov 2003 22:45:21 +0100]:
- added '/lib/cpp' to Requires: of xf86 (needed by xrdb)
May I question this dependency, why should xrdb need cpp? As the man page says The C preprocessor is intended to be used only with C, C++, and Objective-C source code.
Remember that X11 is quite old in computer terms. cpp is not only used for X resources by xrdb but also the complete source configuration is done via (mis)use of the preprocessor. If you have the X11 devel stuff installed, just look at the stuff in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config and you'll see what I mean. This (mis)use of cpp has caused the gcc developers quite a few headaches as it relies on the behavior of the traditional C preprocessor which is useless and unwanted in a preprocessor for modern C.
Of course the dependency is not just added like that, it would therefor be interesting to know why xrdb needs it. Anyhow, perhaps the dependency should be reconsidered and be removed?
No, xrdb really needs the C preprocessor, so there's no way around that dependency. Philipp