On Sun, 6 Nov 2011, Aleksey Cheusov wrote:
I don't understand - do I have to download pkgsrc and compile stuff firstNo. After NetBSD installation user just runs pkg_setup in order to initialize pkgdb and to install *recent* version of pkg_* tools from ftp:// or http://. pkg_setup downloads pkg_summary.gz, finds pkg_install there, unpack it to temporary directory and cd to it, then run ./sbin/pkg_add pkg_install-YYYYMMDD.tgz. pkg_add unpacks pkg_install to /usr/pkg and initializes pkgdb. This is how it works.
OK, so this adds a dependency on something external. I can imagine a number of things that go wrong there (no network connection, me needing pkg_add first time after the binary pkgs were removed, ...), and would prefer to leave things the way they are right now.
NetBSD got the tendency to import more code into the base system instead of getting a simple mechanism to add things at runtime. I think that pkg_* should be imported equally. Or is the plan to throw out all that code again, and replace it with scripts that run pkg_add in their core as sell? If so, I'm all in favour of this. :-)
Adding a simple way to update like you propose sounds like an option for that case. Maybe this is where things should start with, and then see where they move, instead of throwing over existing things.
- Hubert