Subject: feedback from "make install"
To: None <tech-pkg@netbsd.org>
From: James K. Lowden <jklowden@schemamania.org>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 01/12/2003 13:19:20
Hello everyone,
Last night I tried to install perl. I ran "make install" and nothing
happened, no message, no error, nothing. I set PKG_DEBUG_LEVEL=2 and even
that output was unrevealing. Confused and desperate, I sent a message to
the netbsd-help and went to bed.
I should have done the reverse. This morning, to my chagrin and delight,
I find that perl is in fact already installed (must have been a dependency
from another package). So, no problem, next time I'll know better.
I think though perhaps I'm not the first one to be confused? It might be
a good idea for "make install" to issue a message if the package is
already installed. Perhaps it could inspect the database and just say,
"perl-x.x.x is already installed" or run "pkg_info perl5 |more". I don't
know. I wasn't at my best or most alert last night, but that happens to
everyone sooner or later.
For your consideration.
--jkl