On Wed, 23 May 2001, T@W wrote:

> >We have openssh in pkgsrc for folks who use pkgsrc on older systems, where
> >openssh isn't in the base system.
>
> They're advantaged :) because they get a later version (read below).
> And I still feel that both ssh installs should check for other versions
> already installed.

What's to stop you from using the pkgsrc version?

Normally, there would be a check in the package so it wouldn't build
or install on a system that already had the base system binary (see
archivers/bzip2, sysutils/top), but folks have specifically asked to
be able to install the openssh package, even though there's a very
similar openssh in the base system. There are actually quite a few
packages that occasionally lead the base system for various reasons:
maybe they're too new, and haven't been evaluated adequately, or maybe
they have grown incompatible licenses, or both -- databases/db*,
net/bind*, net/ntp4. The bottom line is, the NetBSD base system is
constructed to be a coherent release, while pkgsrc isn't that at all,
but instead servers many masters.


Frederick