Hi everybody - quick question on naming things. Please fill in the blank in the thread: GIven:

A imports B

• A depends on B • B is like the parent in the relationship • A is like the child in the relationship (think: things in A can subclass or inherit from things in B) • B is a

dependency

of A • A is a

___???___

of B What word/noun in English could replace

___???___

?

consumer?

dependent

pants mostly uses

dependee

depender?

Gentoo's package manager uses the phrase:

reverse dependency

or

revdep

if we wanted to do a find-replace and deprecation in pants to

dependent

, i wouldn’t mind. i’ve mostly stuck with

dependee

for consistency with the rest of the codebase

I think Bazel parlance has "rdep", so also reverse dependency

Yeah I’ve been using dependee all along, but it turns out to mean the opposite of what I thought…

hm, no? it’s the right meaning, even according to your link… just an uncommon usage.

Obviously IRS nomenclature says we should call A a

dependent

and B a

provider

. 🏆

consumer

?

My own joking aside. I prefer a word that is pneumonically similar to "dependency"

apt

uses

rdepends

One would hope that if there is a noun used in a public API, the meaning would slap everyone in the face. While I get

dependee

because I think of

dependency

and then think what the opposite would be - it's not a word I use with any frequency in my day-to-day or in programming. Ditto for

dependant

or

depender

or

dependificator

Oh dear.

rdpends

would be very problematic for me because I use gentoo all the time: Gentoo portage uses

RDPENDS

for "runtime dependencies",

BDEPENDS

for "build dependencies (on the build host)",

DEPENDS

for "build dependencies (on the target host)", and

PDEPENDS

for "post dependencies (that should be installed after this one)" The difference between build/target host allows for cross-compilation - Gentoo is a source-based distro, so everything gets compiled from source.

Damn you Gentooooo!!!!! 🙂

I ❤️ gentoo. 🐮

My point was more towards two similar sounding words. I'm semi-meh to the matter, but in this specific example - the relationship is that

A

is highly reliant on

B

, while

B

is ambivalent to

A

I've noticed when writing libs, the grammar tends to be

A

[verb {on}]

B

and

B

is a [noun] of

A

(just my personal experience). Even in this case, I would say "let's find all the `A`'s that rely on

B

yup. Translating that verb vs noun usage into an API becomes rather odd though. Thus this thread 😛

If we're in voting territory and want a d-sounding word, then status quo

dependee

for me.

I like dependent, but not so much more than dependee that I think it worth the churn to rename stuff in Pants, if that’s a thing.. 😉

hm, no? it’s the right meaning, even according to your link… just an uncommon usage.

Nope, in that link a dependee is “the target of a dependency”, “the thing being depended on”

Another one for the mix...

brew uses --installed blah

Show formulae and casks that specify formula as a dependency; that is, show

dependents of formula. When given multiple formula arguments, show the

intersection of formulae that use formula. By default, uses shows all

formulae and casks that specify formula as a required or recommended

dependency for their stable builds.

@happy-kitchen-89482 :

Technical term, not widely used in software engineering outside of agent-oriented programming but finds some use. In agent-oriented programming the antonym is depender, though in general usage the common term dependent is used instead

i read that as “dependee is equivalent to depender or dependent”

That sentence is awkward.

dependent

is used instead of what? The antonym

depender

(so depender=dependent)? or

dependee

the term being defined (so depndee=dependent)?

@happy-kitchen-89482: hm. actually… yea, you’re right. so

dependee

probably is just strictly incorrect. we should fix that, heh.

s/deprecation/hide behind an alias/

yep. very long deprecation.

They’re saying its the antonym, i.e., the opposite…

yea, was a weird sentence… i see now.

I can put up an easy PR to fix this

yes please.

ok, cool. thx for digging into this. I’ve always had a hard time with this, and I can see why now, that it’s not just me 😛

Question: With aliases - do they show up in Help (e.g. for completions?)

yes: the original name does too, but as deprecated

which aliases?