> I can add the patch archive to DISTFILES and have it extracted alongside
> the main distfile but how can I tell pkgsrc that the patch is _not_
> available relative to $DISTDIR but is located in a different directory,
> $WRKDIR/patch-archive/the-patch? Copying the patch file to $DISTDIR
> in a pre-patch target may not work if DISTDIR is not writable.

I think you have to explicitely issue the required patch commands yourself
either as the pre-patch or in the post-patch target.

> 
> Would it be worthwhile to change bsd.pkg.patch.mk so that another
> patch-specific variable PATCH_DIST_PATCHDIR.patch specifies the directory
> for "patch"?

No, I don't think so. You would also have to specify whether these patches
should applied before or after the "normal" pkgsrc-supplied patches.

> 
> One proposed solution treats the whole patch tar archive as the patch
> itself and pipes it (decompressed) through the patch command. It seems
> to work for .tar files but I would not like to rely on this behaviour.

you should do so explicitely in your pkg's Makefile I think.

-- 
Georg Schwarz    http://home.pages.de/~schwarz/
 georg.schwarz@freenet.de  +49 178 8545053