OpenSUSE rpm does not check all dependencies on install

[Robert Munteanu]

I downloaded ​http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/2.0.2/VirtualBox-2.0.2_36488_openSUSE11-1.i586.rpm and installed it without any problems.

Building the kernel module failed ( I expected something catastrophic ) and the log pointed out that gcc and make were not installed.

This is a bit unintuitive, since I'm accustomed to rpm packages always checking for dependencies before installing.

I would welcome an update of the Requires: line of the rpm spec file which would check for the prerequisites.

[Frank Mehnert]

This weak dependency is intended. It is possible for a user to compile and install the kernel modules before installation. This is what some customers do: The compile the kernel module for a dedicate kernel, install this kernel modules on a bunch of machines and install the VirtualBox package after that. And even during kernel upgrade they compile the kernel module once and distribute the module. So no build tools are needed within such an environment. As there are no weak dependencies defined in the rpm format (in contrast to Debian), a dependency can only either exist or not exist so we decided to not depend on gcc, make, etc. and perform the check later when it is really required to compile the kernel module.