pkgsrc oddities/bugs

["M.K." <markucz%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hello,

I noticed that pkgsrc behaves somewhat unexpectedly in certain situations. For
example, if I try to compile a package with NLS support like this

make CONFIGURE_ARGS+=--disable-nls

make simply disregards the change, and still compiles the package with NLS
enabled. On the other hand, if I say

make CONFIGURE_ARGS="`make show-var VARNAME=CONFIGURE_ARGS` --disable-nls"

it does the right thing but 'make install' exits with status 1, complaining
about files listed in PLIST but not present on the filesystem. It seems there
is no way to avoid installing gettext since gmake depends on it, too. So:

1) Shouldn't there be a 'nls' option allowing us to have

PKG_OPTIONS.foo+=-nls

in $PKGMAKECONF?

2) Is there a way to tell make that some files in PLIST are optional and
should be ignored if missing?

3) The pkgsrc guide states:

> * PKGMAKECONF: Location of the mk.conf file used by a package's BSD-style
>   Makefile. If this is not set, MAKECONF is set to /dev/null to avoid picking
>   up settings used by builds in /usr/src.

However, pkgsrc reads /etc/mk.conf and uses the options set there, e.g.
USE_INET6, despite PKGMAKECONF being unset. Is this a bug? Or maybe the docs
are too old?

I will much appreciate if someone tells me whether this is normal behaviour.

Regards,
M.K.