Compatability with FreeBSD Ports [debian package tools]

[Joerg Sonnenberger]

On Thu, Aug 18, 2005 at 02:39:20AM +0100, Hiten Pandya wrote:
> Semantical differences, at best, lets be honest.  They really do not 
> affect the bigger picture all that much and if they do, I would like to 
> hear about them.

Sure, like I said -- the small things I started to really enjoy :-)

> Secondly, when you say the "option framework" is better built then ports, 
> please substantiate and elaborate on your claim.

I can control all options from /etc/mk.conf, not the separation used in
FreeBSD by default. There's a system wide default system and per-package
changes to that. It's not perfect, e.g. current discussion is how to
allow packages with different options to coexist on the FTP server.

> If pkgsrc was to be used for solving the BUILD domain of the problem, it 
> wouldn't be so bad at all, but I think it is NO GOOD at solving the issues 
> with binary packages.

I never said it is supposed to do that either :-) I fully agree with you
that tools for that are needed. apt-get solves some problems, but has a
lot of nasty issues too. I've not investigated how much work it is to
teach apt-get handling of BSD-style packages, but it should be possible.

Joerg