Re: Bootstrap older 2021 pkgsrc release

[Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%joyent.com@localhost>]

* On 2021-12-01 at 19:29 GMT, Andries Annema wrote:

> I have been looking around and trying something here and there, but to 
> me the pkgsrc documentation I found so far - whether it is the 
> official docs or your Joyent blogs and stuff - are either extensive, 
> fragmented or really outdated.
> Is there any sort of "quick start guide" out there on building a 
> package somewhat quickly, specifically for Illumos/OmniOSce?

The problem here is that pkgsrc is a very flexible system, targeting 
many operating systems, file system layouts, unprivileged installs, 
package options, compiler choices, etc.  There's clearly no way to 
document this in a way that is both concise as well as comprehensive.

Yours is a special case, as you are trying to bootstrap a fresh pkgsrc 
install, but specifically target an existing package set.  This means 
you need to duplicate every single choice that I've made in order to get 
a package that will install successfully alongside the ones I 
distribute.

As there are a number of SmartOS/pkgsrc users who have in the past 
wanted to build packages with custom options, I've spent a long time 
working on our pkgbuild system which allows users to spin up a zone that 
contains everything they need to build with exactly the correct options.  
For example here you can see me recently showing a user how to build a 
custom emacs package from scratch in a brand new zone with only a few 
commands:

  https://smartos.topicbox.com/groups/smartos-discuss/Tf3eae327a438a3c8/compiling-emacs-with-motif-athena-in-base64-lts-zone

Trying to build on OmniOS is possible but there will be quite a lot more 
setup work involved, and it's been a number of years since I've tested 
it so there may be bugs.  The general overview is here:

  https://github.com/joyent/pkgsrc/wiki/pkgdev:setup
  https://github.com/joyent/pkgsrc/wiki/pkgdev:building

There just isn't going to be a guide that takes you from zero to exactly 
what you need though.  There are just way too many variables to 
consider, and it's impossible to cover every eventuality and skill 
level.

If you have the ability to run a SmartOS instance somewhere then using 
pkgbuild will make your life a lot esier.  If not it should be possible 
to set things up manually on OmniOS, but you'll be walking a path very 
few people have trod and so there may be things that aren't documented 
or work correctly.

--
Jonathan Perkin  -  Joyent, Inc.  -  www.joyent.com