On Sun, May 21, 2006 at 02:42:36PM +0000, Johnny C. Lam wrote:
|In my mind, pkgsrc does two separate and distinct things, even though
|we just call the whole thing "pkgsrc" -- pkgsrc is a system to build
|software, and pkgsrc is a system to manage software.

I agree with this, but with a few caveats

|I would like to leverage our strength in making software build on
|lots of different platforms, and then allow installing and packaging
|software in the platform's "native" package format. For example, this
|would be "SVR4 package format" on Solaris, or RPM on Red Hat and SuSE,
|and of course, "pkgsrc format" will always be supported by default
|for all platforms. I note that there is a pkgtools/gensolpkg package
|written by Alistair Crooks which points the way do this for SVR4
|packages on Solaris, so this project is clearly doable.

I see the main issue here as being the problem that different dependancy
trees on packages will make for major headaches unless pkgsrc stuff is
kept seperate enough to mitigate any problems, which has the potential
to reduce the benefits.

Firstly, how tightly will pkgsrc packages be installed into the host OS?
eg, can a native Solaris package rely on/use a pkgsrc-supplied Perl?

Or are you talking about maintaining pkgsrc packages independantly of
native ones but just use the same tools to install/update them? So,
continuing our previous example, would one need the native Perl and a
pkgsrc Perl to support native and pkgsrc packages?

In which case I can't see many benefits at all - I personally prefer
pkgsrc precisely because it doesn't interact with the OS package manager
yet is the same across all the supported platforms. For me, that's the
major attraction, but I can see it being useful to ease take-up on 
non-NetBSD platforms ... 

Would the intent be to provide binary pkgsrc packages for other OSes?
Would that impact on pkgsrc package builds?

Regards,
Malcolm

-- 
Malcolm Herbert                                This brain intentionally
mjch@mjch.net                                                left blank