Re: pkgsrc mail lists/resources for Linux, OS X, Solaris etc

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On 12 December 2010 13:16, Greg Troxel <gdt%ir.bbn.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> Thomas Mueller <mueller6724%bellsouth.net@localhost> writes:
>
>> On the matter of making binaries available for Linux, which Linux?
>
> There's the question of not just which Linux but which distribution of
> GNU/Linux :-)
>
>> There are many different package archive formats: .txz, .tgz or .tbz,
>> .rpm, .deb and perhaps others that I can't think of. ÂDo you
>> discriminate against Linux distributions that don't use .rpm, .don't
>> use .deb, etc, or clutter the repository with separate binary packages
>> for all package formats, even within the same CPU architecture?
>
> AFAIK binary pkgsrc packages for GNU/Linux systems (and Mac OS X, and
> ...) Âlook much like those for NetBSD. ÂWith a binary bootstrap kit, the
> same packages should in theory work on multiple distributions.
>
> Instead, my concern would be that different distributions have different
> libraries and that packages thus get built differently. ÂThis is perhaps
> mitigated by preferring to build libraries from pkgsrc instead of using
> native libraries.
>
> Anyone is free to do builds, put them up, and mention them here (they
> won't be hosted on NetBSD.org unless from a Developer).
> Perhaps if making them official becomes the biggest problem we'll then
> have more clarity on the multiple-variants issues.

I suspect pkgsrc-on-linux is most likely to be useful on distributions
like RedHat which have relatively slow moving native packaging
systems.
I think it would be nice to have a (non netbsd.org) page that lists
"3rd party binary packages"... once we have some worth listing :)