On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Brook Milligan wrote:
   > - only infrastructure subtree for installing binary packages from
   >   other sources 
   > 
   > It is the latter use that is hard to do now.

   I don't know what you mean by ``other sources'', but what's wrong with
   pkg_add? You don't need pkgsrc at all for this.

pkg_add is fine, as long as it is up to date.  I was only suggesting
that one means of keeping it up to date on machines that are not
normally used for compiling packages is to have a mini-pkgsrc tree
containing only mk and pkg_tools.  This takes up little space, the
tools can be compiled easily and maintained in an up-to-date state
ready to install packages compiled from a complete pkgsrc somewhere
else.  Right now this is not so easy and perhaps leads to making it
difficult for new users to install binary packages.

It seems that a valuable service is to provide a simple means for
installing current binary packages.  If we cannot supply up-to-date
pkg_add in the distributions (and it is fine if we don't), we ought to
have a simple means of supplying it otherwise.  A mini-pkgsrc with
just mk and the pkg_* tools would be a simple means of satisfying
people who wanted to install binary packages with current pkg_add but
didn't want to deal with having an entire pkgsrc tree on their disk.

Cheers,
Brook