RHEL5 recompiling hell

Trying to recompile the RHEL5 source packages you will meet this interesting circular requirement hell. The arrow points from the package that is required to the package that is requiring it in order to be compiled (is either mentioned in the BuildPreReq or BuildRequires). Oh and this is just a small excerpt when trying to recompile all the source packages in the whole distribution.

Perhaps the most interesting part is that in order to compile the gcc (4.1.1) you need the firefox-devel. Truly a WTF.

The grey boxes are java-based, while the green boxes are those identified as requiring java in one way or another (but which can be disabled by either giving the rpmbuild a --define or by editing the .spec file). The gcc package is rebuilt without ada and java/gcj (again, modified spec file).

Click on the image to get it fullsize. The image will be updated as the recompile project proceeds.