Re: pkgsrc on Solaris - coexisting with already installed software

["Mikhail T." <mi+thun%aldan.algebra.com@localhost>]

Larson, Timothy E. ÐÐÐÐÑÐÐ(ÐÐ):
>> Ok, I'll grant you, that coexisting with optional locally hand-built
>> software is unduly hard. But to rebuild your own versions of what comes
>> with the OS is gratuitous, IMHO... OpenSSL, zlib, bzip2 all come with
>> Solaris-8 and are of reasonably recent versions. Rebuilding these from
>> pkgsrc should be an option...
>>     
> That's when you hope and pray that someone has done a bulk build for your 
> platform already, so you can just grab binaries.  :)
>
> http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/SunOS/
>
> But if you're still using Sol8, you might be out of luck.
>   
The time to build the packages does not worry me. It is the potential
for confusion and conflicts, that inevitably arise from having multiple
versions installed on the same system. A custom application, that
somebody builds using /usr/pkg/include/zlib.h , for example, may end up
using /usr/lib/libz.so.1 at run-time -- and fail in various
"interesting" ways.

On my Linux office desktop, for another example, I'm trying to build
editors/lyx. Instead of using the existing fontconfig-2.4.1, that came
with RedHat's RHEL-5.4, pkgsrc built its own version, 2.7.3, which will
use its very own /usr/pkg/var/cache/fontconfig (instead of the existing
and populated /var/cache/fontconfig).

I guess, a true adept would simply install barebones kernel (and
compiler) and build everything else from /usr/pkgsrc/ But that's a much
harder sell... Besides, there is true value in vendor-maintained rpm/yum
repositories, and, IMHO, pkgsrc ought to seek to complement those,
instead of "fighting" with them for domination...

Yours,

    -mi