Re: Moving mk.conf

[David Holland <dholland-pkgtech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 03:02:14AM +0300, Aleksej Saushev wrote:
 > > (3)
 > >
 > >  - Put pkgsrc.mk.conf in the root of the pkgsrc tree, or in
 > > pkgsrc/conf or some such place. Then it can always be found without
 > > needing any path configuration whatsoever. For bootstrapped installs
 > > it can safely contain the complete path configuration.
 > >
 > > The downside is that it doesn't allow avoiding baking paths into
 > > bootstrap-mk files. Also, it complicates the lives of people who use
 > > one pkgsrc tree with multiple separate $(PREFIX)es.
 > 
 > It complicates lives of all people using mk.conf, not only of those who
 > use multiple separate prefixes. Configuration is mostly tied to prefix
 > rather than to source tree, because most of those options change
 > dependency chains.

That's a good point, except that mostly it exhibits a shortcoming in
the existing buildlink mechanism: ideally if I built e.g. gtk2 with
non-default options that affect what should be buildlinked, and then I
go to compile something that uses gtk2, the buildlinking should be
done based on how gtk2 was compiled, not what the current option
settings happen to be. (Maybe if these disagree, it should warn or
fail, but that's a different discussion.)

Also, your argument applies specifically to build options of installed
packages. Other pkgsrc configuration makes more sense per-tree, such
as PKG_DEVELOPER, PKGSRC_LOCKTYPE, PYTHON_VERSION_DEFAULT, etc.
Arguably licenses do too.

This is why I think the right approach is to support both this and a
file in PKG_SYSCONFDIR.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost