[CFT] packaging the base system with pkg(8)

[Miroslav Lachman]

Glen Barber wrote on 03/08/2016 14:18:
> On Tue, Mar 08, 2016 at 03:40:16PM +0300, Slawa Olhovchenkov wrote:

[...]

>> Packaging of individual utilites is useless (total 19MB vs
>> 30.7+2.8+20.7+2.9) and incorrect (for example, WITHOUT_ACCT not only
>> don't build accton/lastcomm/sa but also cut off accaunting code from
>> kernel for space saving and perforamce).
>>
>
> Packaging individual utilities is not useless, depending on who you ask.
> One of the first replies I received when starting separating userland
> utilities into separate packages was further splitting rwho(1) and
> rwhod(8) into different packages, the use case being not necessarily
> needing (or wanting) the rwho(1) utility on systems where rwhod(8) runs.

I didn't tried pkg base yet but I read posts on mailinglist. I 
understand the need of separating and splitting on the one side and I 
understand the fear of too long list of packages when one need to do 
some maintenance (update or upgrade). So one idea come to my mind - what 
about some meta-packages like "utilities, kernel, libs32, debug" hiding 
all details about real packages if there are some env variable or 
command line switch turned on?
Meta-packages is used in current ports for things like PHP extensions. 
These ports meta-packages are not hiding real packages so this can be 
improved for base packages.

It is just a quick idea how to satisfy both sides ;)

Miroslav Lachman