Re: pkgsrc oddities/bugs

[Greg Troxel <gdt%ir.bbn.com@localhost>]

"M.K." <markucz%gmail.com@localhost> writes:

> I noticed that pkgsrc behaves somewhat unexpectedly in certain situations. For
> example, if I try to compile a package with NLS support like this
>
> make CONFIGURE_ARGS+=--disable-nls
>
> make simply disregards the change, and still compiles the package with NLS
> enabled. On the other hand, if I say
>
> make CONFIGURE_ARGS="`make show-var VARNAME=CONFIGURE_ARGS` --disable-nls"
>
> it does the right thing but 'make install' exits with status 1, complaining
> about files listed in PLIST but not present on the filesystem. It seems there
> is no way to avoid installing gettext since gmake depends on it, too. So:

That's not a supported way to change package builds.  The pkgsrc way is
to have the pkgsrc makefile control things.

> 1) Shouldn't there be a 'nls' option allowing us to have
>
> PKG_OPTIONS.foo+=-nls
>
> in $PKGMAKECONF?

Perhaps; it's a question of someone supplying the code, and whether the
benefits outweight the complexity.

> 2) Is there a way to tell make that some files in PLIST are optional and
> should be ignored if missing?

No, and I'd argue that this is correct.