I'm trying to understand how to use 'make bin-install' since I'm
building my own installer cds for a number of netbsd machines now,
am including my binary packages on it, but am having some difficulty
having my cake and eating it too.

I have my master host building the binary packages and I either
remote mount or add the ./packages directory tree to the installer
cd for the other machines.

from $ man package:
   bin-install
         Install a binary package from local disk and via FTP from
         a list of sites (see ``BINPKG_LIST'' variable), and do a
         ``make package'' if no binary package is available any-
         where. The arguments given to pkg_add(1) can be set via
         ``BIN_INSTALL_FLAGS'', e.g. to do verbose operation, etc.

in mkconf, I add :
BINPKG_SITES= /cdrom/packages/All
since mk/bsd.pkg.mk complains if PKG_PATH is set (for pkg_add)

If I am adding a package whose dependencies already exist in the
pkg database, all goes mostly fine. If a binary package exists, it
is install via pkg_add from the cd.  If a binary package doesn't
exist, it builds it from source, though it does create a binary
pkg tarball when done, which I don't think will be much of a problem
(only trying this on the master for now).

The main problem is that if a dependency is not installed, but is
in the $BINPKG_SITES, make disregards that and builds the dependency
from source.

The package manual doesn't seem clear as to whether or not this
should attempt to pkg_add an available binary package dependency.
Does it not work this way or am I just not driving it correctly?

Thanks