Work Plan: NetBSD System Packages ================================= This document is intended as a work plan for modification of the NetBSD install process to use `system packages' and `package sets' to install the base system instead of the current set tarballs. The steps toward this goal are as follows. Step a.) has already occurred, and the remaining steps will begin this week, with changes influenced by discussion on these lists. a.) update {make,check}flist, etc. to ignore all but the first (whitespace separated) field of each line of each set file b.) add at least additional fields to each line of each set list containing the name of the pkg the file is to be associated with c.) add DESCR's, COMMENTs, etc. in a tree under src/distrib/pkg, this tree will be hierarchical, with an organization similar to pkgsrc. d.) add a script to churn through the set files and syspkg/ and register the existing system, removing anything in the obsolete lists in the process. This is working but needs a complete rewrite. At this point, make build can register packages as if a packaged install had been done. pkgs will be removable, and pkg versions will be usable in a DEPENDS=. This will _greatly_ ease the process of upgrading from a NetBSD system installed at this point to a later packaged distribution. Now comes the fun part: e.) modify the distribution building makefiles to build binary packages from the packages registered in DESTDIR f.) modify pkg_* to understand pkgsets which are tarballs of pkgs with a contents file of some sort. These will be used by sysinst to 1.) minimize the number of files to be downloaded and 2.) present the current selection granularity by default. g.) modify the make distrib tools to build these pkgsets from the binary packages. h.) modify sysinst's set installation to use these pkgsets instead of the current (tarball) sets. i.) modify sysinst to allow `zooming in' on a set and picking what to install at pkg granularity, with dependencies enforced and so on. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ $Id: WORKPLAN,v 1.1.1.1 2002/01/07 22:46:17 jwise Exp $