"Martin J. Laubach" <mjl@cactus.emsi.priv.at> wrote:

> Now OS-X comes with perl pre-installed (and our perl pkg fails
> building), so I thought about adding a darwin-perl pkg that would
> register as "perl" as a placebo so one can install random p5-foo
> packages.

Do the following conditions accurately circumscribe this situation?

* The host OS includes a tool that's in pkgsrc
* At least one pkgsrc package depends on it
* The host OS's version of the tool is sufficient

I agree in this case that installing the pkgsrc version of the tool
ought to be unnecessary, and that we ought to be able to use the
existing tool to satisfy dependencies. However, I think lang/perl5 is
probably one of many such cases, a number which will only increase as we
add support for even more operating systems. So we should find a more
general solution if possible.

It would be great if one could "make install" in lang/perl5 (or any
other package with the same problem) and have the right thing happen:
install a stub package if the OS gives us what we need, else install the
full package as usual. Perhaps the way to do this is for each such
package to specify STUB_FOR_PLATFORM or similar.

Comments from pkgsrc gurus?

- Amitai