Date:        Wed, 21 Aug 2002 10:24:59 +0300
    From:        Jukka Marin <jmarin@pyy.jmp.fi>
    Message-ID:  <20020821072459.GA22511@pyy.jmp.fi>

  | Argh.. ;)

I think that moan belongs on tech-pkg rather than netbsd-users, so
I am taking the liberty of replying to both.

Please respect the Reply-To and reply only to tech-pkg

  | I wanted to install sane-frontends.  BIG mistake!  This required updating
  | the pth library, which in turn deleted "small" things like mrproject, kde,
  | ghostscript, gqmpeg etc etc etc and etc.

Hmm, "make update" ??  Big mistake...

  | Instead of installing a small piece of software, my machine will now be
  | useless for one or two days (provided that no pkg build fails).
  | 
  | I still like the pkgsrc system, the this particular misfeature I hate.

I have been meaning to send a message to tech-pkg for weeks now,
this message just sort of inspired me.

I've been using Fredrick Bruckman's pkg_hack system for some months now
(see the archives of tech-pkg from mid May this year, and in particular:
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.44.0205161830140.7576-100000@tautology.immanent.net> )

All in all I have been very happy with it, I've been able to go upgrade
stuff like pth, libpng, with minimal pain.

I'm not sure I quite like its integration into the pkgtools, where it
simply upgrades anything that looks like it could do with upgrading,
without bothering to ask, but that it has made all of those upgrades so
painless means that it hasn't bothered me much.

I'm not convinced it is bug free yet (I have had occasions when there
still seemed to be dependencies left on packages that had been upgraded,
which should have been, and usually are, upgraded with them - but I'm also
not certain this wasn't caused by some earlier fumbling on my part, I
usually don't notice until much later).  But that's irrelevant.

The basic idea is great, and it has certainly allowed me to keep my
package collection up to date (as much as I want it to be, which means
I have kde2 installed, and occasionally one of its games gets used, but
I don't use it as a desktop or window manager, so upgrading it to kde3
with multiple days of delay (or even just reinstalling kde2) doesn't seem
worth the effort - but I have been able to upgrade all kinds of things
that it depends on (is there anything it doesn't depend upon??)

I gather than post 1.6 pkg views are to appear, and that those might
serve a similar purpose.   It is going to need to be good...

kre