On Fri, 25 Sep 1998, Greg A. Woods wrote:

: > Then you would install gtexinfo in /usr/local, as if info weren't part of
: > the main distribution.  It's still not difficult, and zero more difficult
: > that it already would have been without any parts of texinfo in the base
: > system.
: 
: If someone's going to install a binary TeX meant for some other platform
: then it's equally possible that person will be incapable of installing
: gtexinfo, and incapable of understanding why they should have to --
: after all it's supposedly already part of the base operating system.

If someone's installing TeX as a binary, and isn't anticipating other
dependencies, he should be shot anyway.  Well, not really, but this such
case is not only rare, it's odd.  I don't foresee such a case--see the
second response paragraph below:

: *I'm* unwilling to accept the possibility that a
: package included in base system will be incomplete.

This was addressed with netatalk and coda too; if we ship it, it must _all_
work out of the box.  If that means leaving out texi2dvi, so be it.

The pkg system is made for users who aren't yet knowledgeable enough to do
their own compiles and dependency installation and so forth.  In the pkg
system, of course, this is easy to take care of.  Otherwise, the user should
know `well, I don't have it, so I should probably install it'.

: Adding a stub script includes the depdency in the base.  It's an
: elegant, perfectly legitimate, and widely accepted solution to this
: problem.

It's not NetBSD's accepted solution.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)