Switching from Linux to DFBSD (pkgsrc/packages)

[justin at shiningsilence.com]

> 1.  What's the relationship between pkgin and pkgsrc?  I find pkgin
> *really* useful so far for a lot of things like OpenOffice, Firefox,
> etc., which would have otherwise crippled my machine trying to compile
> them.  That said, I also have some applications compiled from pkgsrc.
> Is it OK/acceptable to mix these two methods?

pkgin is one of a number of tools for managing pkgsrc.  It's not required;
it's just handy.

> 2.  Is there an equivalent of "pkgin" for managing compiled programs
> from pkgsrc?  I can surely see a likely use case of someone compiled a
> load of applications from pkgsrc, and wanting to peridocially
> recompile them if there's been a version increase in the pkgsrc
> repository upstream.

If I understand your question correctly, the equivalent of pkgin is pkgin.
 A precompiled pkgsrc program is (unless you change the default options)
identical to one you compile yourself.

> 3.  Also, is there any merit to having a tool which would check either
> pkgin or pkgsrc and suggest using a binary or compiled-from-source
> based on if the binary file present matches the one to compile from
> pkgsrc?  I appreciate compilation might necessitate a reason other
> than "because I can", but it might be a nice convenience.  Does such a
> tool exist?

pkg_chk can do this, as do other tools.  You may be interested in this page:

http://wiki.netbsd.se/Tutorials#Pkgsrc

Especially the "How to upgrade packages" link.

> 4.  I note that most of the ownership under "/usr/{src,pkgsrc}" is
> owned by group "wheel".  That's fine, since my non-root user account
> is in this group; I also like to compile things as non-root and then
> "sudo bmake install".  Is this a recommended way of working?  Do I
> just "chmod -R g+w /usr", or is there some other preferred way?

Most of pkgsrc is getting close to being able to be installed without root
access.  I've never worked with /usr/src as non-root, though.