Maybe somebody with a pkg_add clue can suggest how to fix these bugs;
at first glance, the program bewilders me. Alan Barrett mentions in PR
22514 ("allow syspkgs to be created during unprivileged build") that
when you use his patches, the

    "pkgdb.byfile.db in the target directory ends up containing entries
     for "/my/target/foo/bar" instead of just "/foo/bar", but that's
     a shortcoming of pkg_add which is not addressed by this PR.
     Everything else, including automatic adding of dependent packages,
     works well enough."

Call that bug #1.

Alan mentions a bug #2 in a private e-mail: pkg_add does not put
the right ownership & permissions on the directories it installs.
I'm trying to get more information about that.

Call the missing feature bug #3: you cannot do an unprivileged pkg_add
which writes a metalog, a la install -M. This is useful when you are
producing a NetBSD boot image in a file.  Just for example, I want to be
able to produce boot images for my Soekris wireless routers without root
privileges. The images need to contain the zebra/quagga routing software
in pkgsrc. I would like to 'pkg_add -p image-dir -F metalog quagga',
and then 'makefs -F metalog flash.img image-dir'. Make sense?

I will send PRs for each of these. In the mean time, if you have any
pointers to give on fixing these bugs, I'd appreciate hearing them.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung@ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933