Re: VirtualBox additions (was Re: Installing, then installing CDE)

[Stephen Borrill <netbsd%precedence.co.uk@localhost>]

On Sat, 22 Aug 2026, Valery Ushakov wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 21, 2026 at 17:02:02 +0100, Stephen Borrill wrote:
>
> > It would be very good to have such a package. Looking at the FreeBSD port,
> > it looks rather a complicated build process (or at least it does to someone
> > not familiar with the VirtualBox build process).
> > https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/tree/emulators/virtualbox-ose-additions-72/Makefile
>
> It's not too complicated, really.  I have posted about the build
> process a few times.  I think it was Chavdar posted about it most
> recently (as he mentioned in another email, he builds GA himself for
> his VMs).

We should get this pushed over the line into a package.

I will go through these threads:

https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2014/08/20/msg003310.html
https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-amd64/2017/11/21/msg002620.html

Chavdar, do you have anything to add?

> > I took at look at the WIP virtualbox-svn package
>
> I thought that was Kamil's experiments with building vbox itself on
> NetBSD as a host.

Yes, but I figured it would use a similar build system.

> > However, both rely on kBuild which is also only in WIP. I've so far
> > failed to get kBuild to build.
>
> Eh... devel/kbuild was a thing, but wiz decided to g/c it.
>
>  revision 1.10
>  date: 2026-08-03 18:33:29 +0300;  author: wiz;  state: dead;  lines: +1 -1;  commitid: 9wQ4ymuABcHEOcQG;
>  kbuild: remove
>
>  No users in pkgsrc, doesn't build, last upstream commit 17 years ago
>
> The part about the last upstream commit is most definitely not true,
> btw.  E.g. Knut (the "k" in kbuild) commited my NetBSD patches into
> his SVN repo in 2017, iirc.  kbuild is basically a bunch of GNU things
> (sed, gmake (hwavily hacked), etc) and NetBSD(!) ash, packaged
> together to be buildable on Windows and OS/2 among other things, so
> obviously it doesn't need any active "development" except catching up
> with compilers becoming progressively stricter (e.g, iirc, the gnu sed
> version was so old that it assumed HAVE_STRING_H means System V, and
> had k&r getopt.c).

Huh, yes, it's in 2026Q2. It seems like wiz's deletion should be reverted 
unless the additions can be built without kBuild (ironically it was wiz 
who created first attempt at a kBuild package). Given the additions are 
all .kmk files, it seems just using kBuild is easiest.

However, the 2026Q2 version doesn't build for me:

https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2014/08/20/msg003310.htmlhte 
doesn't build for me:

autoreconf: running: aclocal --force -I config
autoreconf: configure.ac: tracing
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Libtool
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Intltool
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Gtkdoc
autoreconf: configure.ac: not running autopoint a second time
autoreconf: running: aclocal --force -I config -I m4
aclocal: error: couldn't open directory 'm4': No such file or directory
autoreconf: error: aclocal failed with exit status: 1

--
Stephen