Re: Preserving binary packages

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Mon, 10 Nov 2014 07:42:57 +0000
    From:        Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%joyent.com@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <20141110074257.GW376%joyent.com@localhost>

  | I actually prefer the current behaviour.  I do a lot of development [...]

I think that's exactly the issue Alistair was attempting to raise.
That is, whether the defaults in pkgsrc ought to be set to favour
regular users, or pkgsrc developers.   And I think he's right, they
ought to favour ordinary users - developers can be (should be) expected
to know how to override the defaults to get more developer friendly
behaviour, ordinary users should not (nb: not may not, just should not
be expected to by default).

The question of what the targets should be (personally, I'd prefer pkgsrc
to be rewritten in sh, it is all sh fragments anyway, embedding it in
Makefiles simply complicates things) is not easy - all things equal, if
it were being designed today, the current names would probably be the
right ones.

But Alistair is right - when it was changed (including when destdir was added),
it was done in a user unfriendly way, with commands (make targets) changing
meaning, which is not really a nice thing to do.

But Alistair, it is too late now - this change was too long ago to undo now,
you're simply going to have to learn to type the new commands (or wrap scripts
around them) - there are probably just as many users now used to the new way
as remain familiar with the old - I know I've gotten used to
	make package-install
rather than the old (not sure I even remember what I used to do).  Changing
it again now would be just as disruptive as the initial change was.

kre