Re: pkg/42967

[diro%nixsyspaus.org@localhost]

The following reply was made to PR pkg/42967; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: diro%nixsyspaus.org@localhost
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: pkg/42967
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 11:37:19 -0400

 I also agree. 7z support is an addition to pkgsrc that is seriously needed. I
 have been working on packaging a couple of packages that distribute their
 distfiles in .7z format.
 
 It doesn't seem fair to ask upstream to package their distfile in another
 format when this format is highly portable, already in pkgsrc, and because we
 don't feel like supporting it at the moment.
 
 Whether or not 7zip replaces zip on the Window platform is not a good argument
 against its support. It's there. Some people use it. It doesn't seem to be
 going away for a while. Even if it did, why would we not want to support it?
 Isn't the whole idea of NetBSD and pkgsrc is that it runs on pretty much
 everything? Not wanting to support this archive format seems to run counter to
 that philosophy.
 
 Sadly, this PR was opened over 2.5 years ago and 7zip archive support is still
 not included in pkgsrc. pkgsrc is now frozen and this might not happen for
 another quarterly stable release. I do not understand this obstinance from
 seasoned pkgsrc developers to minute infrastructure changes in pkgsrc,
 especially when these changes are both needed and useful.