Re: ports FLAVORS on pkgsrc (and postfix)

["Jeremy C. Reed" <reed%reedmedia.net@localhost>]

On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Daniel Bolgheroni wrote:

> > One significant difference is that OpenBSD allows packaging these 
> > different "flavors" with unique package names and sub packages (or multi 
> > packages). This makes it easier and quicker for end-users.
> 
> This was a critique I saw a long time ago about the number of packages 
> of some systems such as Debian. I don't know how is it today, but I 
> think it is the same, about having, in number, more packages than any 
> other distribution, but with a lot of fragmentation, with lots of 
> package of the same software.

One thing that Debian does a lot more than pkgsrc is to create separate 
packages for libraries, headers/includes, applications, and documentation. 
(While pkgsrc only does that a little.) So it is a lot more than just 
build options.

For example, on one of my Debian systems, there are about 1014 packages 
available that also have a corresponding -dev package (so maybe 1000 
original projects are separated into over 2000 packages).

  Jeremy C. Reed