[ On Saturday, October 20, 2001 at 02:56:45 (-0600), Rick Kelly wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: don't remove ksh
>
> You don't need to boot from a specific NetBSD version.
> 
> You don't need to reinstall on the netboot system every time you
> upgrade.
> 
> And you don't fill up /var with a software database.

well in case you haven't noticed we do already have the database, and
it's not really very big at all (at least not so long as you don't add
md5 signatures to it, etc.).  It's just not copied to the installed
system (though it should be, in the form of an mtree file that should
have the MD5 signatures pre-generated).  The basic lists, without MD5
signatures, for all architectures combined take up only about a
megabyte, with about 85% being the machine independent portion.

> And chasing -current on any platform would become a little more
> dicey if "make build" had to rebuild a database every time it
> ran. Consider a build that dies while it is manipulating the
> database.

Who said anything about using packaged installs with -current?
Obviously it should be possible, but I think it'll be a very cold day in
the nether world before a basic "make install" is impossible.

In any case I think you're confusing many separate things here.

Trying to keep track of what files are part of the base system by using
their position in the filesystem hierarchy is something like trying to
keep track of which physical pennies are yours after you've taken them
to the bank.  You simply cannot do it reliably -- you must use a more
formal accounting system.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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