Subject: a pkgsrc available file
To: None <tech-pkg@netbsd.org>
From: Jeremy C. Reed <reed@reedmedia.net>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 12/28/2004 11:59:00
The following file is just a short example.

ftp://ftp.NetBSD.org/pub/NetBSD/misc/reed/example-pkgsrc-available

A real bzip2-compressed database listing all available packages
would be around one MB in size.

This contains attributes about available packages. This information could
be parsed to intelligently download the needed packages and check for
dependencies and libraries ahead of time. Because of this, dependencies
could be replaced without removing packages that need them.

Please share your comments.  Or better yet ... please share your code for
using this type of information to make an easy update/installation tool.

I probably should make the Filename field include the suffix (like .tgz).

Should I include the +SIZE_ALL information too?

I should remove any empty License:.

Should I should add a URL: field? Would it have complete URL? Or force the
software using it to add a mirror? Maybe the other information is good
enough for creating a good path to files on a FTP/HTTP server.

Also, as I mentioned in other email: maybe I should remove the
LibRequires: of anything provided by same package. (Or maybe that doesn't
matter since an intelligent program can quickly see it in the LibProvides:
field.)

And maybe we should use objdump (or platform specific tool) to build the
REQUIRES (my LibRequires) instead of ldd so only direct library
dependencies will be listed.

I will start building a complete pkgsrc-available soon of all NetBSD 2.0
i386 available packages.

 Jeremy C. Reed

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