"special" tools e.g. yacc/lex etc. and non-NetBSD systems

[Aleksey Cheusov <cheusov%tut.by@localhost>]

Under OSes other than NetBSD lots of packages failed
because their so called base system _drammatically_ differs
from that of NetBSD. For example, lots of them fail because
they cannot find yacc, lex, uuencode and other tools used
for configuring or building.
Some of such tools are in USE_TOOLS list and many are not - doesn't
matter.

This problem is even seen under other BSDs which base systems are
close to each other.

It whould be nice to see all these packages fail under NetBSD too in
order to be visible by packagers. In this case support for operating
systems other than NetBSD (all of them!) can be drammatically improved
even if software is packaged and tested under NetBSD only.

Examples of such tools: yacc [1], lex, mkdep[2], csh [3],
compress [4], m4 [5], pkg-config [6], msgfmt [7]

I believe pkgsrc developers know how to implement this in a more
efficient way but I think wrappers for all these "bad" tools can be
packaged as special package, and then manipulation with PATH and/or
'ln -s' at 'wrapping' stage can be done.

yacc:
#!/bin/sh
echo 'Add yacc to USE_TOOLS first! ;-)' 1>&2
exit 1

IMHO it is absolutely useless to try to fix this kind of problem
one-by-one as soon as users send PR because they (problems) apeear
again, again and again.

P.S.
Intersting (I hope) Linux statistics
Analysed package failures (direct failures): 801
failed at 'build' stage: 365 (45.5%)
failed at 'install' stage: 144 (17.9%)
         (packager's/pkgsrc bugs in most cases?)
failed at 'configure' stage: 77 (9.6%)
         (packager's/pkgsrc bugs in most cases?)

P.P.S
Another (harder) problem is linking against libraries from NetBSD base
system that are absent in many/most other systems.

[1]
http://www.mova.org/~cheusov/pub/pkgsrc-pbulk/Debian-etch/current/log/20080510.1351/graphics/magicpoint/stage_configure.html

[2]
http://www.mova.org/~cheusov/pub/pkgsrc-pbulk/Debian-etch/current/log/20080510.1351/net/libfetch/stage_build.html
http://www.mova.org/~cheusov/pub/pkgsrc-pbulk/Debian-etch/current/log/20080510.1351/pkgtools/pkg_install/stage_configure.html

[3]
http://www.mova.org/~cheusov/pub/pkgsrc-pbulk/Debian-etch/current/log/20080510.1351/graphics/radiance/stage_build.html

[4]
http://www.mova.org/~cheusov/pub/pkgsrc-pbulk/Debian-etch/current/log/20080510.1351/fonts/Xg/stage_install.html

[5]
http://www.mova.org/~cheusov/pub/pkgsrc-pbulk/Debian-etch/current/log/20080510.1351/sysutils/xapply/stage_build.html

[6]
http://www.mova.org/~cheusov/pub/pkgsrc-pbulk/Debian-etch/current/log/20080510.1351/editors/elvis-x11/stage_configure.html

[7]
http://www.mova.org/~cheusov/pub/pkgsrc-pbulk/Debian-etch/current/log/20080510.1351/mail/clawsker/stage_build.html

-- 
Best regards, Aleksey Cheusov.