Hi,

the www team needs a complete list of package names and the directory
where the package lives in pkgsrc. At the moment, the version of a
package is not really important for our purpose (generating the RSS file
about pkgsrc changes).

The approach the script htutils/changes/pkg-changes2xml takes (it makes
an educated guess about the package name without using "make show-var
VARNAME=PKGNAME") is faster (8 min on an Athlon XP 1500) and uses less
resources but I wonder whether we have to bite the bullet and run
"make show-var" (54 min) for every package periodically.

A simplified version of pkg-changes2xml I came up with was very fast,
but the assumption I made, that the name of the package is the same as
its directory in pkgsrc/*/* does not hold true for at least 426
packages (pkgsrc/cross/*, pkgrc/*/py-*, icecast-2.* vs icecast-1.*, and
many others).

Would such a list have other uses than the one I need it for? I dimly
remember a discussion about a list of packages in the past.

Maybe people have other ideas how to generate this list efficiently.

ciao
     Klaus