Subject: re: PROPOSAL: NetBSD System Packages (LONG)
To: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU>
From: Jim Wise <jwise@unicast.com>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 09/30/1998 00:14:26
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On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, Jonathan Stone wrote:

>The only thing I'd like to see added is about the machinery of
>deciding what goes into system packages and package sets.
>
>The current scripts have machinery that allows us to specify contents
>that are:
>    * toolchain-dependent  -- elf vs a.out
>    * architecture-dependent -- for all arches using a given CPU
>    * port-dependent -- binaries for a specific port
>      (e.g., READMEs that're port-specific).
>I hope we dont lose that entirely;) but see below.

This is one of the major areas which needs to be fleshed out.  The
mechanism I propose is that each set build directory will contain a
directory for each package in that set.  Each package will have a set of
PLISTs just like with current pkgsrc packages.

Right now, third-party packages can have multiple PLISTS, one containing
MI files, and MD files varying by type of platform, or by nearly
arbitrary conditions (mysql client or server PLISTS, or xemacs
PLISTs with or without MULE support to pick to examples).  Hopefully
this can be done in a standard way that will be easy to maintain.

The actual division of sets into packages still needs a lot of
discussion, as well.

>There's also been strong interest in making "package sets" be truly
>machine-independent, where possible (X11 fonts, man pages, usr/share)
>and shareable across architectures (e.g., sharing the userland on all
>m68k ports).  We could do much better at sharing than we have to date,
>given a little re-arrangment of the "set" contents.
>
>This seems a very good time to start tackling this, too.

A good point.  Perhaps the division into packages should keep this
goal strongly in mind, so that there are at least MD and MI packages.
This would make it easy to split into MD and MI sets as well.

At any rate, I strongly believe that the division of our current sets
into packages should be done such that no package installs into more
than one of /, /usr, /usr/share, and /usr/X11R6.  At the least, all
/usr/share packages will thus be MI.

- -- 
				Jim Wise
				jwise@unicast.com

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