On Wed, Sep 24, 2003 at 02:02:39AM -0700, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> It is a little confusing understanding. For example, a comment in
> bsd.prefs.mk says "Set X11PREFIX to reflect the install directory of X11
> packages." And defines it to X11BASE (which is defined as /usr/X11R6).
> 
> And Packages.txt says "${X11PREFIX} should be used to refer to the
> installed location of an X11 package."
> 
> These make it sound like X11 packages are installed to X11PREFIX.
> 
> (But it is not true.)
> 
> Looking in bsd.pkg.mk, I see that is really only done if USE_X11BASE is
> defined (which some packages still use -- and Soren J. gave me some
> reasons why in August).

This is a remnant of the previous way where all X11-library-using
packages were installed into X11PREFIX -- we're in the (very slow-moving)
process of making _all_ packages install into PREFIX instead.

So the old USE_X11BASE setting seems to be what you want to have.

> For the same reason the base system is done that way. It is sometimes nice
> to have X-specific software installed in its own directories.

My guess is that the base system is done that way because XFree86
is a separately maintained source tree by a third-party.
It's even its own module in CVS.

On the other hand, pkgsrc aims to be a consistent package installation
system, so one prefix should be enough (IMHO, of course). Or?

> I am guessing that it may be easy to provide this. Maybe add a system-wide
> option like USE_X11PREFIX.
> 
> It could be used like
> 
> .if (defined(USE_X11PREFIX) && defined(USE_X11)) || defined(USE_X11BASE)
> 
> when USE_X11BASE is checked before setting PREFIX and MTREE_FILE.
> 
> I'll try this ...

Something like this will probably work, I guess.

I'm still not sure what you're buying with it :)

Cheers,
 Thomas