Re: pkgsrc on Linux, how to get started and distinguish packages from base system?

[Ottavio Caruso <ottavio2006-usenet2012%yahoo.com@localhost>]

On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 at 05:23, S.P.Zeidler <spz%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
>
> How does one get started with pkgsrc on Linux, especially when starting with a minimal Linux?

(Warning: not an authoritative answer!)

Read bootstrap/README and bootstrap/README.Linux. These documents
don't cover everything, but it's a good start. And you also want to
give a look at:
https://github.com/joyent/pkgsrc/wiki
and obviously the pkgsrc guide:
https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/doc/pkgsrc.html

>
> NetBSD and other BSDs typically have a well-defined base system, but Linux does not usually.
>
> In Linux, everything's a package, including the kernel and util-linux (not in pkgsrc).
>
> You'd need much more than that just to bootstrap pkgsrc, and later there would be the issue of how to upgrade.
>
> Non-rolling-release Linux distros would reinstall rather than update: not a full answer, since somebody somewhere has to build the packages and configuration files.

If you start from a minimal Linux installation, you would upgrade the
base system separately from pkgsrc, unless you run Centos and want to
use Joyent's ready made binaries:
https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/install-on-linux/
or Jason Bacons' ones:
http://mirror1.hpc.uwm.edu/pkgsrc/

I usually upgrade all my packages using pkg_rolling-replace every
couple of months.

IMHO, pkgsrc on Linux is not perfect, as most packages have been
tested mainly on NetBSD. You can follow pkgsrc-bulk, just to give you
an idea of what builds and what doesn't.

My day-to-day system is LMDE 3, which is not a good base to start
using pkgsrc. I'm planning to make various installations of Debian and
Fedora and test pkgsrc build on there.


-- 
Ottavio Caruso