Hi,

the patch framework assumes that additional distribution patches are
simple files which can be downloaded to $DISTDIR, decompressed if
necessary and then piped through the patch command.

I do not see how I could use a .tar.gz archive which _contains_ the
patch to be applied.
I can add the patch archive to DISTFILES and have it extracted alongside
the main distfile but how can I tell pkgsrc that the patch is _not_
available relative to $DISTDIR but is located in a different directory,
$WRKDIR/patch-archive/the-patch? Copying the patch file to $DISTDIR
in a pre-patch target may not work if DISTDIR is not writable.

Would it be worthwhile to change bsd.pkg.patch.mk so that another
patch-specific variable PATCH_DIST_PATCHDIR.patch specifies the directory
for "patch"?

One proposed solution treats the whole patch tar archive as the patch
itself and pipes it (decompressed) through the patch command. It seems
to work for .tar files but I would not like to rely on this behaviour.

ciao
     Klaus