new package system proposal

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

Chris Whitehouse <cwhiteh at onetel.com> wrote:
> My suggestion is to start with a ports tree that is fixed in time.
> Make that ports tree available as part of this package system and
> compile a typical desktop set of ports ...

Isn't this exactly what is currently done as part of a release?  The
ports tree is tagged so that a snapshot can be retrieved using csup,
and packages are built for publication on (for example)
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-7.0-release/

Granted this includes all package-distributable ports rather than a
"typical desktop" subset.

> Modify pkg_add so that it can be told to use this 'snapshot'
> including downloading the fixed ports tree that was used.

AFAIK pkg_add currently does not download the ports tree at all --
that is done using csup or portsnap -- but it can be directed to
a release set or other remote package repository via the -r flag.
My only issue with that approach is that, last I knew, there was
no way to specify a mix of local and remote repositories (to deal
with the case where I have already downloded some subset of what
I end up needing, so I want pkg_add to search locally first and
use the remote repository only for packages that it can't find
locally).