On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Donald Lee wrote:

> >No, there isn't a way to do this. It's a design decision. The problem is
> >that pkgsrc is designed to be internally consistent. That means that for
> >instance perl is configured to do certain things that the pkgsrc perl
> >modules will expect. I'm not 100% on all of the perl config, but I doubt
> >your perl has the same config. So the perl you have won't do what pkgsrc
> >needs.
> >
> >Thus you should install the pkgsrc perl. :-)
>
> If there is some mutual exclusivity at work here, will the pkgsrc
> perl continue to do what my current installation expects?  If I have
> two perl installations, will they fight?

Maybe. Some problems are: if scripts depend on perl in the path, they may
get a different perl than they expect. Keeping perl out of path will
probably help. Otherwise, if paths are all hard-coded, you should be fine.

> This is on my production server, which is quite stable by the way. (NetBSD
> is very nice that way) I don't want to mess it up.  My reasons for doing
> the installs myself basically boil down to my being able to understand
> and control exactly what is installed.  (I find the perl PODs a little
> terrifying, by the way, but I have little choice but to use them.)
>
> The package system is cool from an ease-of-installation perspective, but
> the increased effective opacity is troubling to me.

Just compile your own. :-) If you can download the source for packages,
it's not that hard. Then you'll have the complete source, and a mailing
list (tech-pkg) to ask about problems.

The ease-of-installation perspective can be really cool if you want to
duplicate servers. You have bundles (packages) that represent exactly what
was installed. You can duplicate your production machines for
debug/replacement easy. You can also clone instalations easy.

> My inclination would be to do the pkg_add -f and hope for the best.  In
> theory, perl should work about the same, as long as it is installed
> correctly, and has the requisite parts.  If I have to move to a model
> where anything I add *has* to be via pkgsrc, then at the least, I have to
> set up a test machine and do a little testing first, and I'd like to
> avoid that.

I'd suggest moving to pkgsrc (compiled by you) eventually. You know your
production environment and when that would be feasable. You'll probably
have to learn to do things a little different (I did), but once you get
over that hurdle, a lot of other things become easier.

Take care,

Bill