The following reply was made to PR pkg/36603; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: "Johnny C. Lam" <jlam@pkgsrc.org>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: kre@munnari.OZ.AU
Subject: Re: pkg/36603 (pkgsrc "make checksum" even more broken than I suspected)
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2007 16:37:06 +0000

 On Fri, Aug 31, 2007 at 02:55:01PM +0000, Robert Elz wrote:
 > 
 >      Date:        Fri, 31 Aug 2007 14:20:02 +0000 (UTC)
 >      From:        "Johnny C. Lam" <jlam@pkgsrc.org>
 >      Message-ID:  <20070831142002.B0C7E63B8B5@narn.NetBSD.org>
 >  
 >    |  I will leave this PR as analyzed for now, and I hope to commit a change
 >    |  with your proposed behavior later today, at which point I'll request
 >    |  testing and feedback again.
 >  
 >  No problem, if you allow me enough time - just getting the updates (I have
 >  my own copy of the repository that I sync from one of the mirrors - so the
 >  mirror needs to update first, and then I need to get that, it all takes
 >  a while...)
 
 I've committed the changes to pkgsrc/mk which allow for "checksum" to
 be run at any time as you had proposed.
 
 >  What I haven't tested yet is whether we're now back in the state where
 >  "make checksum" calculated the checksums twice if the distfile needed to
 >  be fetched (once while fetch verifies it worked and doesn't have to try
 >  again at a backup MASTER_SITE, and then once again for the checksum target).
 >  That never bothered me, but (I am assuming) was something of the inspiration
 >  for the earlier change.
 
 This wasn't what motivated the earlier changes.  I believe it was an
 error in judgment that occurred when bsd.pkg.mk was undergoing some
 necessary refactoring and "checksum" was moved into its own module.
 At the time, "checksum" got promoted to full "phase" of the pkgsrc.
 
 The changes I've just committed make "checksum" into a utility target
 again that is mostly of use to pkgsrc users and not an internal
 structural target.
 
 If these changes work the way you expect, then I think we can close
 this PR.
 
 	Cheers,
 
 	-- Johnny Lam <jlam@pkgsrc.org>