> John Kohl adapted FreeBSD's package software for NetBSD and released
> some packages for it.  I've used it and it works well enough.  I keep
> saying that if I get some more time, I'll create some more packages
> but alas, that time hasn't come.

John did a nice job getting this ported and creating the packages he's
done so far.  I've been meaning to get some more built myself but...
Christmas, New Year's, relatives from out of town...sigh.  
 
> Perhaps more people need to start creating some packages and putting 
> them in one place.  Although it *is* a fact that pretty much everything
> I've ever grabbed off ftp sites has built without my shedding any
> brain-cells...

Correct, but building from source takes a lot of disk space for some things,
and a lot of bandwidth, and for some things, like TeX and getting all the
pieces working togather, is a lot of work.  I feel easy availability of 
binary packages has had a lot to do with FreeBSD's and Linux's popularity.

>  > Also, a nice install program would be a HUGE win.

The pkg stuff John ported has pkg_add, info, and delete.  They all work 
quite nicely.

BTW, I created a mailing list, currently only John and myself are on it, but
this as good a place and time as any to mention it.

Ahem...there is a mailing list, "netbsd-packages@good.com" to discuss work
on binary packages for NetBSD.  I envisioned the purpose being coordination
(so that two people don't spend a week doing a package for the same thing),
discussing conventions (/usr/local/share versus /usr/local, etc).  It is a 
majordomo list, so send the usual:

	subscribe netbsd-packages

to "majordomo@good.com".  It is an open list.  I'm only on the backend of a
20k link here, so I can't handle a lot of ftp traffic, but I'm willing to
coordinate a master archive if there are a couple of better (faster) connected
sites willing to be mirrors. 

Most packages build pretty straight forward these days, but some take some 
work, at least to do it nicely (for instance I've got tcl and tk built w/
shared libs, the tclX and tkX versions soon, this is a big win...).

John has all his packages somewhere, but I can't find the mail with that for
the life of me.  I've put out the package tools he ported for anon ftp here, 
as well as some of the packages that John did:
 
	ftp://ftp.good.com/pub/NetBSD/packages

Get the tools, join the list, build packages, we'll see what happens.
The list is being archived, I'll keep the archive up for ftp regularly as well.
--
Mark Gooderum
mark@good.com