List of Projects

This page has a list of things that could perhaps be done to improve pkgsrc. An entry does not imply that there is consensus and that the project should be done (but projects for which there is consensus shouldn't be done should not be listed!).

Many things are vague, especially when there has been much discussion.

This list is not meant to replicate or replace a bugtracker, or to replace the information in doc/TODO. It is meant to emphasize things that are particularly important and relatively achievable.

pkgsrc-wide

SUPERSEDES

In CHANGES-*, we have "successor foo" for removed packages. Make pkgin and perhaps pkg_rolling-replace use this information.

compiler selection and bootstrap

Deal with using a different compiler to build all packages. This includes bootstrapping, and it includes using clang on a gcc-native system.

Remove the use of GCC_REQD to merely express requirements implied by USE_LANGUAGES. The hard work of course is making this safe to do.

resource-aware parallelism

We have MAKE_JOBS and pbulk multiple jobs. Some packages use so much memory/disk that these have to be sized so they fit. It would be nice to be able to do most things in parallel even if packages like firefox and rust can't be done parallel, via some declarative non-kludgy markup.

This needs consensus on if it's a good idea, design, implementation, and testing.

bulk analysis

Document, resurrect or implement support for analyzing bulk logs sent to pkgsrc-bulk@. Provide early warning of newly-broken packages. Provide lists of packages that break everywhere, break most places except X, and break only on Y.

NetBSD-specific

rust

This entry is about getting to the place where building bootstrap kits is trivial and rust builds on all NetBSD architectures supported by rust, 100% reliably. It includes updates to rust being entirely without trouble.

conditional support for "stable past this pullup"

It would be nice to be able to ifdef on "NetBSD 8 before pullup X", e.g. to turn on MAKE_JOBS_SAFE=no.