Subject: Re: handling machine-dependent files in syspkg
To: Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@netbsd.org>
From: Pavel Cahyna <pcah8322@artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz>
List: current-users
Date: 05/26/2003 12:36:43
> On Sun, 18 May 2003, Jeff Rizzo wrote:
> 
> > So, I just started playing around with syspkg the other day, and
> > it's got a lot of potential, but looks like it's suffered a little
> > bitrot since its initial commit over a year ago.  I noticed that
> 
> Yes, it has. It's worst problem is that it doesn't support unpriv'd
> builds, and a #2 problem is that it doesn't seem to do DESTDIR builds so
> well.

Maybe I misunderstood the problem, but doesn't its root lie in the fact
that to build a binary package ('make package' in pkgsrc) the package
need to be installed first and you need root privileges for this? This
is annoying on itself. In OpenBSD "ports" it is done in some way so that
the binary package is first built, and then installed. So I suppose
(haven't studied it too deep) that it's possible to make a binary
package without being root. And this could have an advantage that it
would be easier to control what a package is trying to install (I guess
that currently, if a package installs a file during "make install" which
it shouldn't, it will go unnoticed.

Sorry if something of above is wrong, I'm not an expert on pkgsrc.

Bye	Pavel