Avoiding cycles in the dependency tree

[Thomas Cort <tcort%minix3.org@localhost>]

Greetings,

I'm a developer from the Minix project. I've been running into cyclic
dependency / compiler package issues, and I'm looking for advice on a
solution.

Background: Minix has no compilers in the base system. The 2 compilers
(gcc and clang) are built with pkgsrc. All minix systems come
prebootstraped (i.e. the install CD installs pkg_install, pkgin,
clang, etc). To use pkgsrc beyond just binary packages with pkgin,
users checkout our patched version of the pkgsrc tree (from
git.minix3.org:pkgsrc), they install gcc44 with pkgin, use our default
mk.conf ( 
http://git.minix3.org/?p=pkgsrc.git;a=blob;f=minix/mk.conf.minix;h=7c236edefa0a906d3cd3a2aaff5be63e237562bc;hb=HEAD
), and they're ready to go.

Issue #1: We get cyclic dependency issues with gcc. I assume this is
because gcc requires gcc to build. Is there an existing workaround for
this or any advice on how to approach a fix?

# pkg_info -r gcc44-4.4.6nb4
Information for gcc44-4.4.6nb4:

pkg_info: Cycle in the dependency tree, bailing out

Issue #2: pbulk doesn't really work because it blows away /usr/pkg
(where the compilers live) when it tries to build packages. We've
tried installing the toolchain into another directory (/usr/pkg.sav/),
but libtool and other tools sometimes pick up stuff in that directory.
Any advice on this front? Maybe add gcc to the binary bootstrap kit
for Minix?

Thanks in advance,
Thomas