"I can't see how drupal is storing the dependents. They are not in the system table info column."

Drupal doesn't store dependents, it gets them from the .info file each time:

http://api.drupal.org/api/function/drupal_parse_info_file/6
is called by
http://api.drupal.org/api/function/module_rebuild_cache/6
which is what also calls

following add1sun's page: http://drupal.org/node/315987

Ebony-II:~ ben$ cd /RCS/
Ebony-II:RCS ben$ mkdir projects
Ebony-II:RCS ben$ cd projects/
Ebony-II:projects ben$ export CVSROOT=:pserver:agaric@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs/drupal-contrib
Ebony-II:projects ben$ cvs login

Logging in to :pserver:agaric@cvs.drupal.org:2401/cvs/drupal-contrib
CVS password:

Reference

Converting 5.x modules to 6.x
http://drupal.org/node/114774

Upgrading your menu system from 5.x to 6.x
http://drupal.org/node/103114

Changes specific to the Enabled Modules module

Description replaced with a serialized info column in system table.

There are at least two other modules in a similar space as Agaric's Enabled Modules:

(and this page will list them when i find them!)

A Drupal 4.7 snippet, List all enabled modules for a 'colophon' or 'about' page.

We can commit to Drupal.org CVS and use it just like we use subversion to manage our sites. No more trying to develop a module in subversion and contribute changes to CVS, just do everything in CVS. It's not that much worse than SVN.

Don't believe me? Watch:

In the home local checkout:

Agaric wants our sites to generate a list of enabled modules.

Update: So we made an enabled modules module.

We want each enabled module to be listed even if the module code isn't there. This is convenient when moving messy sites.