On Tue, 29 Sep 1998 15:25:55 -0400 (EDT)  Jim Wise wrote:

> What follows is a quick proposal for how we can implement System
> Packages for NetBSD.  I am posting this now to generate
> discussion/debate/flames/suggestions which will hopefully lead to this
> being hammered into a more concrete plan.

Jim,

Good stuff.  I don't know if this has been talked about on tech-pkg in
the past - I've only just subscribed to that list today.  However, on
tech-install I sent the basis of a proposal for sysinst to deal with
set installation which could be changed to deal with system package
installation.  (Well, it's pretty much two different names for the
same idea).  That message was on September 18, with a message id of
<199809180703.RAA18374@balrog.supp.cpr.itg.telecom.com.au>.  If we can
get your proposal working cleanly with sysinst (which was my goal) then
everyone will be better off.

I think we'd still need an overall summary file of all packages with
similar information in my message (size and dependancies) - the
difficulty would be generating that.  Maybe this can easily be done by
looking at the +CONTENTS file of each binary package, but I don't know
much at all about the internals of binary packages and how dependancies
are handled to know what's possible and what's not.

Simon.