Dealing with circular dependencies

Dealing with Circular Dependencies

Circular dependencies (A->B->A) result in portage errors like this:

  * Error: circular dependencies:
 (dev-go/luci-go-0.0.1-r4:0/0::chromiumos, ebuild scheduled for merge) depends on
  (dev-util/android-provision-0.0.1-r111:0/0.0.1-r111::chromiumos, binary scheduled for merge) (buildtime)
   (dev-go/luci-go-0.0.1-r4:0/0::chromiumos, ebuild scheduled for merge) (runtime)
  * Note that circular dependencies can often be avoided by temporarily
  * disabling USE flags that trigger optional dependencies.

Refactoring

In case of A->B->A dependencies, breaking up the A package into A1->B->A2 is always the preferred solution.

PDEPEND

In cases where breaking up packages would require an excessive time investment AND if the circular dependency is only a runtime dependency, rather than compile-time dependency, PDEPEND can be used.

The PDEPEND variable specifies runtime dependencies that do not require being satisfied during build time, and can be merged after the depending package.