Re: Sets, subsets, syspkgs, and MK*

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

I think this thread is conflating several issues. To try to clarify
what I think might be consensus.

- NetBSD needs to provide binary patches for official NetBSD releases.
If anyone is building their own system from source they should not be
using any official NetBSD binary patches
People should be able to build their own binary patches for their own
machines, and the system should make it easy for them to determine
exactly what relevant build options were set when building binary
patches, but that should not make providing official NetBSD binary
patches any harder

- Moving to a more modular system where its easy to exclude
functionality by files rather than building different versions of the
same files is a generally desired feature
A good example is kernel modules (include standard comment about still
enabling people to build monolithic kernels)
Syspkgs are a good way to expose this modularity to an installing
sysadmin, and if such a sysadmin has elected to eliminate
functionality by not installing certain packages then they should
still be able to install binary patches (maybe not in the first
version of binary packages, but it should be a goal)
Some build time options which change the contents of generated files
may change to only affect which files are built and packaged. It would
be good to be able to differentiate those options from ones which
change the contents of generated files

What did I miss? :)