Re: pkgsrc (Was: NetBSD vs. FreeBSD)

[David Brownlee <abs%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Sun, 8 Feb 2009, dragvit%volny.cz@localhost wrote:

> I see a lot of them, biggest being lack of proper and _COMPLETE_ documentation.
> You're right that there are many cool features in pkgsrc, but most of
> them are undocumented, documented poorly or in a way that makes reading
> the documentation a pain. I recently used pkgsrc on HP-UX - and while
> I did manage to compile quite a lot of stuff with it, it was from "excellence"
> and "doing anything".

        That is definitely an issue.

> To get most stuff working, I had to do a lot of tweeking, mostly by editing
> files which IMHO only pkgsrc developers should know about. Some problems
> were solved by setting various, totally obscure variables - usually
> after getting a hint from people on #pkgsrc. When I asked "where can
> I find documentantion on these magic flags", most of the time the answer
> was "there's none". Having to dig thru tons of obscure files looking
> for obscure flags isn't my idea of time-saving utility.

        Could you feed back some suggestions on what is missing from
        the pkgsrc guide? Even if you only list a few of the things
        that caught you it can definitely help the next person trying
        to use pkgsrc on an obscure platform.

--
                David/absolute       -- www.NetBSD.org: No hype required --