In message <20060104155927.GV1560@apb-laptoy.apb.alt.za>, Alan Barrett writes:
>I have just finished committing several changes relating to
>syspkgs.  It's now possible to generate syspkgs as part of
>a native or cross build using build.sh.  Essentially, if you do
>
>    $ build.sh -D ${DESTDIR} -T ${TOOLDIR} -R ${RELEASEDIR} \
>	    -u -U -m ${MACHINE} release syspkgs
>
>then ${RELEASEDIR}/${MACHINE}/binary/syspkgs
>will be populated with a whole lot of files
>with names like base-sys-root-3.99.15.0.20060104.tgz.
>
>You can experiment with installing them into a scratch
>file system like this:
>
>     $ su
>     # newfs /dev/r${SCRATCHDISK}
>     # mount /dev/${SCRATCHDISK} ${MOUNTPOINT}
>     # PKG_DBDIR=${MOUNTPOINT}/var/db/syspkg pkg_add -p ${MOUNTPOINT} \
>	     ${RELEASEDIR}/${MACHINE}/binary/syspkgs/base-dhcpd-bin-*.tgz
>
>and it should install the base-dhcpd-bin syspkg and all its dependencies.
>
>I think that the creation of syspkgs is working fine now,
>but installing them via pkg_add will encounter small problems.
>

Very nice!  Doing a 'make release syspkgs' now, so I can play with it...

How is it expected to be used?  I'd like to be able to create a 
per-system file -- /etc/syspkgs.conf? -- and have sysinst and
/usr/src/build.sh use it to decide what to install.

Also -- what file contains the list of packages and their contents?
(I assume the "small problems" with pkg_add you refer to are just 
startup transients.)

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb