Re: newbie learning to use packages

On Mon, Oct 28, 2002 at 04:04:00PM -0500, Michael D. Spence wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: netbsd-help-owner@xxxxxxxxxx
> > [mailto:netbsd-help-owner@xxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Alistair Crooks
> > Sent: Monday, October 28, 2002 3:52 PM
> > To: Michael D. Spence
> > Cc: 'Perry E. Metzger'; netbsd-help@xxxxxxxxxx
> > Subject: Re: newbie learning to use packages
> > 
> > I don't know of any packages which use /usr/local as their PREFIX or
> > LOCALBASE.  We have some that install into /usr (OK, we have one that
> > installs there, the pkgsrc/pkgtools/pkg_install package, which is
> > essentially the NetBSD package tools in a convenient pkgsrc format).
> 
> I'm pretty sure I've never encountered a NetBSD package that actually 
> installed into /usr/local.  But I am pretty sure I've seen /usr/local 
> mentioned in man pages and other documentation (e.g., examples) [Hmmm, 
> "for example, examples..."].  Anyway, I have an account at an ISP that 
> uses NetBSD.  They use /usr/local instead of /usr/pkg, but that may be 
> due to reasons of history or some other factors of which I know nothing.

Ah, sorry, I didn't understand your original mail - my apologies.

Yes, we have to generalise a lot of packages which assume that they
will get installed into /usr/local, or put their configuration files
straight into /etc.  There are sometimes when these fall through the
cracks, so if you find any, please let us know.

If you want to set up things on your own machines to go into
/usr/local, it's best to do this right at the start, before you've
installed any packages.  What you need to do is to set

LOCALBASE=/usr/local

in /etc/mk.conf, and all the packages will use a prefix of /usr/local,
rather than /usr/pkg.  There is one unfortunate side-effect of doing
this, however - you won't be able to use any of the binary packages on
ftp.netbsd.org, since they are compiled with the prefix /usr/pkg in
them.
 
> I'm new to NetBSD, as you may have guessed.

It's always nice to have new blood along - often the old-timers miss
things "because they just know it".

Take care,
Alistair