On Fri, 21 Feb 2003, grant beattie wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 03:04:07PM -0600, Frederick Bruckman wrote:
>
> > Unless (until) the package dependency system evolves significantly,
> > the only thing to do (IMO), is to expect any collection of binary
> > packages to have associated with it, a set of implicit dependencies:
> > as in, this set is for NetBSD 1.5.[123], this set is for NetBSD 1.5.4,
> > this set is for Red Hat 8.0 + openssl-0.9.6g + ncurses-XXX, and so on.
>
> That makes sense, and I agree that currently there is not much room
> for movement. However...
>
> It would be very useful to be able to forcibly use the pkgsrc versions
> of all packages. It means being able to update the base system and
> pkgsrc independent of one another, which is a big win if you maintain
> systems running various different OS's and like to keep things in sync.

This is assuming that the NetBSD pkgsrc versions are still actively
maintained, even while the packages aren't built or used on NetBSD.

> At the moment, you need to be a little careful about what you have
> installed in your base system and what you update. This might be more
> of a challenge on Linux because you generally get A Lot of stuff. We
> cannot possibly track every OS distribution and installation option
> out there.
>
> Using the pkgsrc versions of everything eliminates this problem,
> since you only know you're only using the very core base libraries.

How would it work, if the bootstrap kit, or something like it, did a
reachover into NetBSD's src/dist, src/gnu/dist, or src/crypto/dist?
Especially for projects where the portable distribution is already
committed whole under *dist, it should be pretty easy to accomplish.
Plus there are models in src/tools and src for this.

With a common code base, the non-NetBSD users would get exactly the
same thing as the NetBSD users, the maintainers work would be cut in
half, and the NetBSD users would get the benefit of a wider audience,
i.e. more timely and relevant bug reports. Everybody wins.

Another benefit of dropping the sometimes dependencies in favor of
a bootstrap base line, is that you really don't have to deal with
dependencies. You could install on top, the way NetBSD users upgrade,
leaving your old shared libraries around as long as you need them.

Frederick