>  Is there a change that could be made to the NetBSD libraries that would
> avoid this forever

No.  The problem is that much software tries to get the error string for
OS errors--to be more polite than "open config.file: error 2", it can say,
"open config.file: No such file or directory."  Or something like that.
The sys_errlist was a variable that used to be relatively undocumented
and definitely unmentioned in header files, but available for people to
use.  In order to use it, they had to declare it somehow.  Now, possibly
for standards reasons, but for definitely for convenience, the variable
is defined in the header file.  The older programs that have their own
definition for it should be fixed in some fashion.

It would help if you could, for the programs that you have to modify,
keep track of what you change and submit the changes back to the author.
That way, perhaps future versions won't have to be modified.

-allen

-- 
Allen Briggs - end killing - allen.briggs@bev.net ** MacBSD == NetBSD/mac68k **
   Where does all my time go?  <a href="http://www.netbsd.org/">Guess.</a>