On Thu, 7 Dec 2006, uhel wrote:

> > I want to take advantage of the new pkg_summary databases (which are 
> > provided on many FTP servers). Anyone using them?
> 
> can you point me to some documentation?
> What it is, why use it and howto use it...
> 
> A quick search with google doesn't show anything usefull. Same with
> the NetBSD wiki.

See the pkg_summary(5) manual page.
http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?pkg_summary++NetBSD-current

The data file is included with many binary package collections.

How it can be used:

- software retrieve the pkg_summary for the collection to use

- use this database to decide what is out-of-date on system and
  to know conflicts and to see if the dependencies are available (and 
  check disk space and licence) before doing any downloads or installs

- if okay, then software will download needed packages and 
  deinstall/reinstall in correct order (based on info in the pkg_summary 
  database)

Basically like yum (except we have one file instead of hundreds) or like 
apt-get ("available" file).

The database is generated and uploaded.

But I don't know if we have a tool to use it yet.