Subject: Re: Newbie Questions
To: Richard Rauch <rauch@rice.edu>
From: Alistair Crooks <agc@pkgsrc.org>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 01/26/2002 23:24:49
On Sat, Jan 26, 2002 at 04:05:00PM -0600, Richard Rauch wrote:
> > > Two caveats are worth mentioning:
> > >
> > > (a) pkgsrc has a configuration file.  I think that it now comes up under
> > > the name /usr/pkgsrc/mk/bsd.pkg.defaults.mk; to be found by the pkgsrc
> > > system, it needs to be copied into /etc/mk.conf (cp
> > > /usr/pkgsrc/mk/bsd.pkg.defaults.mk /etc/mk.conf).  You should probably
> >
> > I don't know if I'd copy the whole file over. Usually I just use
> > that defaults file as a reference, and I put just the settings I
> 
> Is there any reason not to?  It does make it easier to see what your
> options are.  (Just browse the file and edit it to suit your needs.)

We used to have a file, mk.conf.example, which was used in the same
way you describe - copy it to /etc/mk.conf, and edit in place. Over
time, new options get added to the defaults, others get taken away,
others still get changed. And merging this into your (old) version
in /etc/mk.conf becomes difficult to manage. So we introduced a
different scheme, whereby now the bsd.pkg.defaults.mk file is
sourced to pick up the defaults, and you need only specify the
options where you want to differ from the defaults, in /etc/mk.conf.

This has made things much easier for me, as a user of pkgsrc, and I
haven't heard any bad press about it up until now. Something tells
me I shouldn't have said that.

Regards,
Alistair