Re: Regarding MESSAGEs during pkg_add installation of meta packages

[David Holland <dholland-pkgtech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

Since this topic just came up again last week:

On Fri, Apr 04, 2025 at 07:52:38PM -0400, Greg Troxel wrote:
 > What I don't understand is that in your argument it feels like there is
 > "and then a miracle occurs" where someone adjusting a package figures
 > out all the things that somebody else might have trouble with, and warns
 > about them, and somehow does not include too much, so that the set of
 > Really Important documentation won't be missed, because after all we are
 > talking about people who are not reading the larger set of upstream
 > docs.

At least some of the time, the person updating/adjusting a package
knows something about it, and so the chances of noticing that there's
something to watch out for are considerably higher than if this is
left to each end user separately.

The existence, as I pointed out, of old MESSAGE files with
(once-)pertinent points in them indicates that it can in fact happen
at least some of the time.

Also, like with UPDATING notes in base, sometimes things will be added
retroactively after someone steps on a problem.

If there isn't anywhere to put such notes, it's guaranteed that
they'll never be seen and never save anyone time or trouble.

 > I think most of the other issues come down to the package really should
 > be different than it is.

Sure, in an ideal world there'd be no need for anything like
MESSAGEs... or patches... or PYTHON_VERSIONS_SUPPORTED... or a
bajillion other things that we have to have because pkgsrc is here to
deal with real software and software sucks.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost