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

["Thomas Mueller" <mueller6725%twc.com@localhost>]

from Ottavio Caruso:

> (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

I looked at bootstrap/README and bootstrap/README.Linux.

I think the prerequisites are mainly for Debian and Debian-derived systems, but could differ in a more general case.

Is the pkgsrc guide, pkgsrc.html, the same as found in doc/pkgsrc.html in the pkgsrc tree?

> 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.

I am not familiar with LMDE but guess frrom "DE" thhat it's a desktop environment.

Pkgsrc is native to NetBSD.  I would guess pkgsrc could be ported to other BSDs but would lack some features specific to other BSDs.

Compatibility with Linux would be more complicated, since Linux is an anarchy of many different distros with no well-defined base system.

from Greg Troxel:

> pkgsrc will be configured with /usr/pkg, so you end up with a separate
> tree of pkgsrc stuff.    Then, other than security, you won't care so
> much that the base system is old.
 
> If README.Linux doesn't list the full set of prereqs, we should fix it.
> There is a list for debian-world systems.

I noticed the list of prerequisite packages for debian-world systems, am not familiar with most of those packages by the names in that list.

It would be good to have a more general list.  Perl?  Python?  gcc >= which version?

Now to look at the headers to see if there are any typos like "Fwom:"  It looks like I corrected that one.

Tom