At the moment (for alpha at least, and probably similiar for other
architectures unless something really funny is going on) there would
appear to be in the order of about 400 different system package names
making up a full distribution.

On my PIII 700MHz laptop, 'pkg_info | wc' returns 155 and takes an
non-insignificant amount of time (fivish seconds - didn't time it) the
first time it's run (of course it's nearly instantaneous the second
time).  Think of that on an old vax or m68k box.  And the database for
those 155 packages use just over 8MB of disk and 1340 inodes, so we're
talking perhaps over 3000 inodes and perhaps 20MB used to keep system
package info.  This seems a bit excessive...

Note - these figures are a very rough.  I haven't looked into things
like my average installed package size (in terms of number of files)
versus the average system package and so on.

Simon.
--
Simon Burge                            <simonb@wasabisystems.com>
NetBSD CDs, Support and Service:    http://www.wasabisystems.com/