Alan Post <apost@recalcitrant.org> writes:

> In article <E19VSuQ-0000cT-00@schnucke.hafn.myfqdn.de>, Thomas Hafner wrote:
> > 
> > for Debian GNU/_NetBSD_ is still experimental, I'd rather like let
> > NetBSD 1.6 run my Debian GNU/_Linux_ 3.0 binaries by emulation. Does
> > that work well? Any hints, reports?
> 
> Just curious -- why the interest in GNU userland utilities?  NetBSD
> userland works quite nicely.

Because I'm missing some stuff that I'm used to. Maybe I should rather
search for a _substitute_ running under NetBSD than expecting the
package to be ported to NetBSD?

E.g. I'm used to tob + afio for making backups, because every _file_
is compressed (gzip) instead of the whole archive. That enables me to
use a partially damaged archive by restoring just the non damaged
part. But unfortunately I couldn't find tob and afio for NetBSD:
neither in my binary packages on CDROM nor listed on
<ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/pkgsrc/README-all.html>. Do
I have to look anywhere else? Or is there an adequate substitute for
tob + afio?

In addition I'm missing: bbdb (The Insidious Big Brother Database) and
dependent packages (for syncing with devices a.s.o.).

> > Will I be able to run APT, the Advanced Package Tool of all Debian
> > based distris, which is - IMHO - much superior to RPM, the Red Hat
> > package managing stuff?
> 
> I suggest trying out pkgsrc.  It's really quite good, in my opinion.

Ack, but if I'm interested in software, that doesn't exist for NetBSD
but for Debian GNU/Linux? (I think, the latter one consist of nearly
10000 packages, which is probably more than NetBSD offers.)

If I want to deinstall a package, is pkgsrc able to remove dependent
stuff, like APT does?

Can pkgsrc handle dependencies from roles, like APT does? E.g. a
package might depend from mail-transport-agent, which isn't an actual
package, but something like a role, and any of the packages like exim,
sendmail, postfix, qmail a.s.o. can play that role.

> Sorry about not answering your questions.  :)

Doesn't matter. It might be the beginning of an interesting discussion
(not a flamewar, I hope).

Regards
  Thomas

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