Re: Is there a way to specify optional/recommended dependencies?

On 20/04/2026 23:00, Brian Inglis via Cygwin-apps wrote:
> On 2026-04-20 08:58, Hamish McIntyre-Bhatty via Cygwin-apps wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I was wondering if there is a way to specify optional or recommended 
>> dependencies for a package with a cygport file. wxPython has some 
>> optional dependencies that I'm working on next, and I thought it 
>> would be good to mark them as optional or recommended if possible, 
>> rather than just adding them as hard dependencies.
>
> Hi Hamish,
>
> Nothing supported in package metadata or scripts, but for lesspipe 
> optional dependencies are listed in the (lengthy) description with the 
> hint:
> "Converters are checked for and used if available, including Cygwin 
> packages:
> ... [see below]
> To use these, select them for install in the Cygwin Setup program."
> and added into the b-r for testing, as we do not want to drag in 
> packages that are not essential:
>
>     https://cygwin.com/cgit/cygwin-packages/lesspipe/tree/lesspipe.cygport 
>
> ...
> # supported shells and apps for tests and converters
> BUILD_REQUIRES="bash zsh
>     git libiconv less mutt vim perl
>     antiword binutils brotli bsdtar bzip2 cabextract catdoc cpio 
> djvulibre
>     ffmpeg genisoimage ghostscript groff gzip hdf5 id3v2 ImageMagick
>     jq lynx lz4 lzip mandoc mediainfo netcdf odt2txt openssl
>     p7zip perl-Archive-Zip perl-Image-ExifTool pigz poppler 
> python39-pygments
>     qpdf rpm source-highlight texlive unrtf unzip util-linux
>     w3m wordview writerperfect wv xlsx2csv xz zstd"
>
> REQUIRES="less libiconv"    # iconv for code page conversions
> ... 

Thanks, I shall follow what lesspipe does then.

Best,

Hamish