> > Well, I would suspect that the NetBSD ports mechanism would have to be at
> > least somewhat different from the FreeBSD version, owing to the desire to
> > support so many architectures.
> I'd actually be rather surprised if this were the case.  I've probably
> either done or helped to integrate several hundred FreeBSD ports at
> this point, and nearly _all_ the changes I've run into have been
> BSD vs SomeOtherUN*X types of issues, not x86 vs other architecture
> issues.

I think someone was expressing a desire to have a ports-like mechanism for
obtaining direct binaries, for which architecture is obviously an issue (at
least until someone writes an x86 interpreter for all the other architectures
:-), but perhaps I am inadvertantly conflating two different proposals here.

You will note, I hope, that at the end of my first message I expressed some
surprise at the apparent cavalier attitude toward discarding an existing
body of work, though.  For raw sources, I don't personally see any major
problems with the FreeBSD ports mechanism.

> Since I mentioned audio, I should also note that we fully expect to be
> running the OSS/Lite sound system in another 6 months or so anyway (if
> not sooner - I'm being deliberately overconservative here), ...

Would its design allow NetBSD/Sun and NetBSD/Sparc ports to maintain
compatibility with the Sun audio interfaces?  SCO is not the only commercial
UNIX, after all.