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Old 27th March 2017
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IdOp IdOp is offline
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Join Date: May 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aht0 View Post
Hello. I've been trying to use NetBSD 7.1 binary packages and found that "7.1" packages directorys seem to be softlinked to earlier version on FTP/HTTP/etc mirrors. instead of being packages purpose-built for "7.1".
I've recently installed 7.0.2 and soon after moved to 7.1. I've found that the packages built for 7.0 are working fine on 7.1 so far.

Quote:
As a result, whetever I would try to install, I'd get bunch of errors in style:
Code:
---Mar 26 18:54:11: installing somepackage-0.1...
pkg_add: Warning: package `somepackage-0.1' was built for a platform:
pkg_add: NetBSD/x86_64 7.0.1_PATCH (pkg) vs. NetBSD/x86_64 7.1 (this host)
at best, I'd get warning and the package would install.
These messages are often not much to worry about. However in some cases, they can indicate a problem later on, after installation. For example, about the same time as installing 7.0.2 on my desktop, I put -current on my laptop, and figured I'd use the 7.0 packages (there were no binary packages for -current). It turned out some of the packages would run and others wouldn't. There had been a library bump-up in -current that affected some packages which expected older versions of the library. In this situation, I suspect -current users would be expected to build their own packages, or to wait.

Quote:
At worst, package would fail because required dependency is not there.

Which in turn, would release chain of failures..

Code:
pkg_add: Can't install dependency osabi-NetBSD-7.0.1_PATCH
pkg_add: Can't install dependency libgtop>=2.28.4nb3
Issue feels worst using 7.1 package directory, I cleaned up the packages completely and replaced the repository to "7.0_current" - which is giving me less failures, but still..
Unfortunately there seems to be no guarantee that the pkgsrc binary collection is complete at all times. Something you want or need may be missing, which can be frustrating, although considering the huge amount of work involved I think they do a pretty good job. Sometimes the solution is just to wait, e.g., at one point recently gnuplot was missing, and a week later it was there.

Quote:
Btw, pkg_adm in NetBSD installer, for some reason fails to download and install pkgin though one can install pkgsrc packages through installer.
Did you mean pkg_admin? Its man page doesn't seem to mention pkgin. The latter is itself a package that some find useful, but it's not clear that it should be automatically installed if installing packages through the installer (something I've never done). pkgin itself has several dependencies, so you'd have to install it using the system's pkg_add command.

Last edited by IdOp; 28th March 2017 at 04:45 PM. Reason: minor fixes
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