Selon Alistair Crooks <agc@pkgsrc.org>:

> On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 01:40:24PM -0700, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> > On Tue, 20 Jul 2004, Peter Seebach wrote:
> >
> > > I'm going to be writing about pkgsrc.  I'd like a guru to offer
> > > advice, suggest things I've overlooked, and so on.  My goal is to make
> sure
> > > that pkgsrc is well-represented in this article, which is intended for
> > > publication.  I'm sort of looking along the lines of the article I did
> > > a while back for OSDN about the rc.d system.
> > >
> > > In particular, I am very curious about the history of pkgsrc, and my
> initial
> > > poking around has found very little documentation about this.  I know
> it's
> > > a NetBSDism, but I can't find a Design & Implementation document, or
> anything
> > > entirely similar.  (Although the pkgsrc documentation is, indeed,
> wonderful.)
> >
> > By the way, I also have a contract to write a pkgsrc article for a
> > print Linux magazine.
> >
> > You may want to post to the tech-pkg list to reach a wider pkgsrc
> > audience.
> >
> > The history of pkgsrc is basically an import of FreeBSD ports in October
> > 1997. (OpenBSD started with the same ports, I think, in September.)
>
> The pkg_install tools were imported to the main source tree earlier -
> in June 1997.  The main pkgsrc module was started in October 1997,
> although we moved the main .mk file from src/ to pkgsrc later still.
> pkgsrc/sysutils/top was the first package added, IIRC, and we went on
> to add more piecemeal, except for the archivers category.
>
> OpenBSD had 3 attempts to start a ports tree; IIRC, the one that
> started just after ours was replaced by a later effort.
>
> > FreeBSD ports was started around August 1993. I think Jordan Hubbard wrote
> > the initial pkg_* tools around July 1993.
>
> The FreeBSD ports tree was initially a repository for binary packages.
> I know, because I produced their boehm-gc and vile binary packages,
> cross-compiling from NetBSD.  I still have mail from jkh saying "you
> know, it really would be better if you used FreeBSD".  The reason that
> the FreeBSD Makefiles (used to) have "new ports collection Makefile"
> springs from the switch to source-based compilation.
>

Maybe you can start by reading Alistair's "packages views" documentation which
gibves many usefull informations
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/software/pkgviews.pdf

  Hope that help

--
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 cela ferait longtemps qu'elle serait interdite."
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