On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 03:01:09PM +1300, brook@biology.nmsu.edu wrote:
> Alistair Crooks writes:
>  > On Tue, Nov 12, 2002 at 01:03:08AM +1030, wulf@ping.net.au wrote:
>  > > I've been porting several GIS applications such as proj4, shapelibs, mapserv,
>  > > gpsd etc with several others to follow and hence would like to create
>  > > a new category "pkgsrc/gis" that accommodate this type of application - see
>  > > http://www.freegis.org for more information on GIS.
>  > > 
>  > > Are there any objections in creating this new category? 
>  > 
>  > Usually we just put them into the bucket categories - misc, devel - until we
>  > get a critical mass for a new category - I'd encourage you to do the same here.
> 
> I would like to suggest that indeed "gis" would be a valuable new
> category.  I, for example, have long wanted one and have made some
> packages for my own use that would fit into such a category.  There is
> a rather large amount of software relating to GIS, much of which is
> organized at www.freegis.org.  Because there is a useful reference
> site it would be relatively easy to track down the critical mass.

Having a gis category would be good if we had some gis packages - from
a pkgsrc PoV, I'd prefer to see it the other way around.
 
> Perhaps creating the category and starting to fill it would serve as a
> catalyst and would enable NetBSD to be used as a general GIS platform.
> That would be a very valuable thing, actually.

Well, I'm not sure about that - we had a corba category some time ago,
and nothing seemed to become of that.

Having said all of that, I'd really like to see gis packages, and,
yes, if we get a critical mass (there are currently 8 packages in the
ham category, which probably gives a decent rule of thumb to "critical
mass"), then we'll make a separate category for them. Let's start walking
before we can run, though, and port these packages to NetBSD...

Thanks for the suggestion,
Alistair