At 23:56 Uhr +0100 17.12.2001, Alistair Crooks wrote:
>I took a look through the pkg PR database, and found the following
>PRs from you:

[...]

>My apologies for the problems you seemed to have experienced using
>pkgsrc on Solaris

Alistair,

no need to. I was describing a simple fact; the NetBSD pkg system is the
pkg system for NetBSD - if it is useable on other systems, all the better.
But that was an afterthought, and from time to time, it shows.

> - but 3 reported problems on a new venture for
>us (supporting pkgsrc on a completely different platform to NetBSD)
>does not sound like it's that bad, and certainly not worth the
>"second class citizens" pejorative that was used.

"pejorative"... I looked it up, just to be sure. There is much more effort
going into the NetBSD aspects of the pkg system - development, maintenance,
documentation, user base - than into (I am picking the one I know)
Zoularis.

Have you built (better: tried to build) Zoularis recently?

[hauke@pizza] /<6>cross/zoularis > ls -la
total 7
drwxrwsr-x   3 hauke         512 Dec 18 07:48 .
drwxrwsr-x  26 hauke        1024 Dec 16 00:22 ..
drwxrwsr-x   2 hauke         512 Dec 18 07:48 CVS
-rw-r--r--   1 hauke         906 Oct 31 23:03 DESCR
-rw-rw-r--   1 hauke         619 Sep  9 15:35 Makefile
-rw-r--r--   1 hauke          63 Oct 31 23:03 PLIST
-rw-rw-r--   1 hauke         181 Sep  9 15:35 distinfo
[hauke@pizza] /<6>cross/zoularis > fgrep zoularis Makefile
DISTNAME=       zoularis-20010704
[hauke@pizza] /<6>cross/zoularis >

As it is, it doesn't even get past installing share/mk/*, and has been in
that state for many, many weeks. I could have send-pr'ed, but I don't even
know where to start fixing, and since I've been flamed by a NetBSD
developer for pointing to an updated FreeBSD pkg without preparing and
submitting the package, I've become somewhat reluctant. On the other hand,
nobody else cared, either.

There is virtually no documentation, not even a manpage; essential design
issues (like "use the NetBSD X11 instead of /usr/openwin, keep the
bootstrap tools and libraries separate from the package tree") are handed
down in casual remarks (if at all), leaving you in a maze of twisty
includes and .mk files, all alike. "When it breaks, you get to keep the
pieces."

This is a far cry from the well-maintained pkg support for NetBSD (where
such a state would not last a day!), and in stating that simple fact there
is nothing "pejorative".

Again: I am happy that Zoularis exists. I had the luck to capture a working
snapshot, enabling me to build 40+ packages with reasonable effort. But
that does not make it a first class citizen and leaves a lot room for a
multi-OS package system.

	hauke


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