Re: support for .tgz packages on 5.x

Loh John Wu wrote:
> You can do a pkg_add for a local .tgz file but pkg_add -r or
> pkg_add with a URL (i.e. ftp://) path specifiedwould not work because
> it automatically assumes the packages are of the .tbz variety and tries
> to uncompress it as a bzip file.

Yep.  I've been working on a rewrite of pkg_add for about
six months now.  I'm making steady progress and hope to have
something stable and testable early next year.

> I was just wondering if there was a plan/timeline to add full support for
> .tgz packages
> because in the code, there are comments about adding support for tgz files.
> /* XXX: need to handle .tgz also */.
> Also has anyone modified the code on their system to support .tgz packages?

The new pkg_add I'm working on should be an exact drop-in
replacement for the current one, with a few major new features:

   * On-the-fly extraction.  No temporary directory will
     be needed.  The new pkg_add analyzes the package and
     extracts files directly to their final location.
     This allows you to extract packages from stdin,
     for instance, and nearly triples the speed.

   * Automatic format detection.  It will "just work"
     with tgz and tbz packages (and be easily extended
     to any other variant someone may decide they need).
     The format detection works the same whether you're
     reading the package from a file, URL, or stdin.

   * As part of this project, I'm building a robust
     library for handling tar archives.  As a result, we
     may also get a new 'tar' implementation in the bargain.

Despite a serious lack of time, I am making steady progress.
My goal is to have a version that's stable enough for
testing early next year (February?).  I'll be announcing
it on -current when it's ready.

Tim Kientzle