Re: how to upgrade a whole machine ...

["matthew sporleder" <msporleder%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Jeremy C. Reed <reed%reedmedia.net@localhost> 
wrote:
> > This has probably been suggested before, but... It sounds as though the
>  > versions of pkg_* tools bundled with NetBSD should be changed to use a
>  > wrapper, in much the same way that /usr/sbin/sendmail is actually a link
>  > to mailwraper(8), which consults mailer.conf(5) to decide which flavour
>  > of sendmail to invoke.  Then, when you want to upgrade your pkg_* tools
>  > from the ancient ones shipped with the OS release to the modern ones in
>  > pkgsrc, you simply install the new versions from pkgsrc and edit the
>  > relevant .conf file to point to them.
>
>  That wrapper config seems to imply the admin has a choice. But would they
>  ever go back to using system supplied version?
>
>  Some other options are:
>
>  - pkgsrc install direct to /usr/sbin/pkg* (which end up getting
>  overwritten by system upgrades).
>
>  - Get rid of /usr/sbin/pkg_* and only use /usr/pkg/sbin/pkg_*. But bad
>  idea for those who like to rm -rf /usr/pkg/
>

Why is this bad?  You want to use pkgsrc then you download the
pkgtools for your platform- easy.

>  - Simple script in base system to fetch and install pkg_install package.
>  Script could extract it, then run that extracted part to install itself.
>

How about pkgtools live as a separate bundle in the netbsd install
(pkgtools.tgz) and it is treated like non-netbsd platforms using
pkgsrc.