>From: Herb Peyerl <hpeyerl@beer.org>
>Date: Tue, 02 Jan 1996 07:56:44 -0700
>
>Thorsten Lockert <tholo@SigmaSoft.COM>  wrote:
> > True.  With a better package installer and a setup where one could get
> > a package compiled for all existing ports would be really neat!
>
>I don't see what's wrong with the existing package installer... Granted,
>it's not in the tree which it probably should be... I haven't read the 
>1.1 docs but I imagine it says in there somewhere that there are packages
>available and where they're located...

I think pkg_add and friends should become part of othersrc.  They're
quite small; the gzip'd tarball for the lot is ~34k.

>Now, as to why no one is contributing packages? I don't know. I have some
>suspicions though:

Note: I'm not criticizing Herb's points here, just trying to provide
some answers for them:

>a) BETSI certificates, while probably a good idea, provided that little
>bit of extra non-incentive because it was "yet another thing to have to
>figure out" on my already growing list of "things to figure out one day".

AFAIK BETSI certificates are optional.  If you don't want to figure
them out, then don't.

Probably a greater disincentive is having to track down all of the
little files something installs in order to create a .pkg file.

>b) Most stuff builds right out of the box anyway.

CDROMs, CDROMs, CDROMs!!!!  As Jordan has pointed out, FreeBSD pushes
package creation in order to help 'Net-less CDROM customers.  Packages
can also help users with slow connections; it took >90 minutes for me
to FTP Emacs 19.30 over my 14.4k PPP link.

>c) Most NetBSD users are of a level that don't really need someone to hold
>their hand and do stuff for them.. They're perfectly capable of ftp'ing 
>something and typing 'make' themselves...

Agreed, but packages save time.  Just because I *can* figure out how
to build X11R6 from source doesn't mean that I *want* to do so.

>d) not everyone agrees on where a package needs to be installed. In fact,
>I remember the discussion and not everyone agreed on the structure of 
>"/usr/local" itself not to mention the group of people who didn't believe
>in having a "/usr/local".

Anyone who has religious objections to how a package is organized can
build and install the thing themselves.

I have packages for Emacs 19.30 and Ispell 3.1.20 under 1.1/i386
nearly ready to go, but I moved last week, and it may take a bit for
me to get up and running again.
-- 
Mike Long <mike.long@analog.com>           http://www.shore.net/~mikel
VLSI Design Engineer         finger mikel@shore.net for PGP public key
Analog Devices, CPD Division          CCBF225E7D3F7ECB2C8F7ABB15D9BE7B
Norwood, MA 02062 USA       (eq (opinion 'ADI) (opinion 'mike)) -> nil