>>There are still many packages that haven't been built for mac68k 
>>since the
>>1.6 era.  Using a modern machine to cross-compile shouldn't take 
>>very long
>>at all, so I imagine there's some other factor.
>
> There is... pkgsrc is only wrapping the packages' own build systems, 
> not
> replacing them. Some of them may even support a cross-build, others 
> don't
> or even compile and run intermediate binaries during the build that 
> have to
> be treated differently on a cross-building machine.
>
> Since we don't and cannot control that zoo of programs (unlike the 
> NetBSD
> distribution), cross-building the whole lot is extremely hard. On a 
> fast
> machine, emulating the target cpu may offer a way out, at least for
> critical builds - Krister Walfridsson presented a paper on that at
> EuroBSDCon 2004. Don't know if anything came of his proposal.

Hrmm... the mac68k emulators I've used don't support full enough 
emulation to run NetBSD.  That said, Basillisk ][ on a high end PC 
should be able to burn through builds far faster than on native 68k 
gear.

Now I'm going to have to go digging to see if this situation has 
improved any...

Joshua Coombs