On Thu, 1 Oct 1998, Todd Whitesel wrote:
> In other words, have pkg-sets be little more than a bunch of pkgsrc packages
> in a tar file together with a table-of-contents file at the front. Think 'ar'
> plus 'ranlib'; pkg_add is to dl_open() as sysinst is to 'ld', somewhat.

I was thinking along these lines (though I didn't explain it very well):

  * At present, the *.tgz file for a binary pkg includes references to
    its dependencies.  Extend that to allow the *.tgz file for _any_
    pkg to (optionally) include the complete *.tgz files for some or all
    of its dependencies.  For example:

	foo-1.23.tgz contains:
		+CONTENTS
		+COMMENT
		+DESC
		<any other "+" files>
		<files that are installed as part of the "foo-1.23" pkg>
                <zero or more *.tgz files for pkgs that "foo-1.23"
                        depends on (all, or some, or none of those pkgs,
                        at the discretion of the person who assembled
                        foo-1.23.tgz)>

   * pkg_add does the right thing whether or not the dependency *.tgz
     files were inside the original *.tgz file.

--apb (Alan Barrett)