>Hi Berndt,
>
>> Do we have an index which lists all applications/utilities known to
>> work on NetBSD? I would be willing to compile and maintain such a list 
>> if there is a need for it - any comments?
>
>I'd say go for it, but I think this is a _huge_ task, as there are so many
>applications out there. IMHO we need sth. like the FreeBSD people have.
>If you check if an application runs, you usually make it run, but don't
>provide the patches to other people, let alone to the developers of the
>software. Thus a lot of 'porting' is done over and over again. I know that 
>this doesn't belong into the NetBSD source tree, but it should be kept
>somewhere. I know we have a port-collection, but I am not sure how many
>sites would be able to mirror it, if it grew bigger. But I also think
>that we need a lot more people building packages and upload them to
>ftp.netbsd.org. What do people think about the FreeBSD ports-collection,
>which only keeps the diffs? Maybe we can keep both, the diffs in one
>directory and the unchanged src in the other. Or create a CD with the unchange
d
>src?

(sorry to quote in total)

Phil Knaack and I have been discussing a tree of NetBSD capable
applications, customised to BSD make, such that when one acquired a new box
or a new port or rebuilt a system, one could simply rebuild all their
non system binaries (emacs, joe, ghostscript, various) with a single make
depend and make.  I'm willing to donate the disk to the project, and will
maintain this side of it, but I don't know that we've moved beyond the
talking about it phase.
--
Sean Berry is a computer scientist trapped in an engineer's mind.
I imagine someone is likely to misinterpret my opinions as those of my
various employers.  This is not the case.