pkgsrc on Mac OS X

Amitai Schlair

The NetBSD Project

How usable is it?

• In the latest powerpc bulk build by kristerw@: 4729/6567
• For comparison, from yyamano@'s presentation five years ago: "300 pkgsrc can be compiled without any changes."
• Notably broken: KDE (fixable, Fink has it)

Solved problems

• user(8), group(8) workalike shell scripts
• pkgtools/rc.subr ported
• GNU libtool
• GNU-compatible cpp by default (OS X also has weird cpp)
• automated PLIST handling for *.dylib
• buildlink and wrappers help greatly with portability
• dlcompat provides dlopen(3) compatibility on older systems
• significant cross-platform bootstrap improvements
• regular bulk builds on PowerPC
• increased manpower: general popularity of Macs among developers

Unsolved problems

• pkgsrc still needs case-sensitive filesystem
• individual packages vs. Mac linker
• integrating rc.d scripts into boot process
• difficult to sync pkgtools/rc.subr with the original in src
• fix individual packages (steal from Fink, MacPorts, etc.)
• some gcc4 fixes left to be made
• we need to provide Mac OS X disk images of pkgsrc
• we should investigate providing binary packages in native OS X format
• we need a native Mac OS X GUI pkgsrc browser
• native Mac OS X apps: what to do about them?

FIN

• Questions?