I am on RH EL3. I have openssl in the base OS /usr paths. I have
installed pkgsrc openssl. But this doesn't seem to be picked up by
packages which have ../../security/openssl/buildlink3.mk 

Across pkgsrc, SSLBASE varies depending which directory you are in.

This seems to me to be wrong: it means that even if you install openssl
from pkgsrc, you cannot guarantee that its SSLBASE value will become
visible to other packages when you build them.

In my mk.conf I have *only* the one line:

LOCALBASE=/opt/pkg

And this is what I see:

[root@ginger apache2]# cd /opt/pkgsrc/security/openssl
[root@ginger openssl]# bmake show-vars VARNAMES=SSLBASE
/opt/
[root@ginger openssl]# pushd /opt/pkgsrc/www/apache2/
/opt/pkgsrc/www/apache2 /opt/pkgsrc/security/openssl
[root@ginger apache2]# bmake show-vars VARNAMES=SSLBASE
/usr
[root@ginger apache2]#

I have tried to read the ML and gnats. I found

http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=27632

but with all due respect to the pkgsrc experts, I can't see how this
state is valid. If I install openssl (and I have) and it sees SSLBASE
as being /opt, then surely the same holds for any package which has
../../security/openssl/buildlink3.mk in it?

-George