Re: pkg_add vs pkgin

[Mayuresh <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost>]

On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 04:22:37PM +0100, Jonathan Perkin wrote:
> For our binary builds I provide the exact configuration that we use to
> build them, as well as a sandbox environment.  This allows them to
> easily build custom packages that both re-use existing binary packages
> for dependencies as well as ensuring the required package options are
> correct.

Yes that helps. But for pkgsrc-current users, binary repos are not always
up to date (e.g. we still don't have firefox on 8.0 amd64 when I checked
last).

Once one has to turn to pkgsrc for this and one still wants to reuse
binary packages already available following is the task:

- Find out transitive deps of a package and ensure each one of them is
  installed. [ And if some of them are not present, start this process all
  over for that package ]
- After doing so also, often pkgsrc would snub the installed package and
  go about building its own as some dependency in the chain would have
  evolved by then. (This very much happens.)
- Ensure that your options and the stock options match and your dep is
  satisfied by the version available in the binary repo.
- Last but not the least, if one is keen, ensure that 'installed manually'
  flag is reset for the deps.

All of the above is currently doable but with a lot of manual
intervention.

To be very specific, what might help is an option in pkgsrc (or may be a
`contrib' tool if we don't want to touch the core of pkgsrc) to
automatically install from binary repo iff the options match and version
meets the dep requirement. The metadata availability from binary repos
would help write such tools.

I can try writing, if someone can comment on:

- feasibility / pitfalls of above idea
- documentation of metadata of binary repos (pkgin or otherwise)
- Where to insert a hook in pkgsrc tools, where it goes for dependency
  building, where I can plug my logic to apply checks and do a binary
  install (or continue with the source install)
- Also, for above point, is it really feasible to make this a wip work or
  without patching core it's not feasible.

Mayuresh