[CentOS] question on unused directories in /usr/lib and /usr/lib64

[Lamar Owen]

On Wednesday, February 15, 2012 04:13:23 PM m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> There are indeed some packages that have a ridiculous set of dependencies.
> I can't remember what it was - it's been months, but I wanted to install
> some command line tool, and it wanted gnome installed.

This is one area 'build it yourself' distributions have done better than more general-purpose distributions.  With gentoo, as an example, you can build the system with options telling it how to build each package.  

There are packages that require some things installed in the general case due to build-time options, and in order to eliminate the dependency you have to rebuild from source; to then go and say you want that feature back you have to rebuild from source.

Some seemingly 'ridiculous' dependencies are there for that reason, and the packager is building for the general case, not for the minimalist case.

And, no, I can't think of one right of the top of my head, either.