Subject: pkgsrc on Debian GNU/Linux
To: None <>
From: Ognyan Kulev <>
List: pkgsrc-users
Date: 12/21/2007 10:50:25

I use Debian Etch (stable) and I needed GIMP 2.4 so I decided to try pkgsrc.
This is my second time of using pkgsrc on Linux and I'm disappointed again by
not enough documentation about pkgsrc on Linux. I think some of the things
below should at least be mentioned in pkgsrc documentation, so that people
don't waste hours finding such things.

1. To compile gtk stuff (and maybe other), the following settings should
be present in mk.conf:

X11BASE=                /usr
LDFLAGS+=               -Wl,-rpath -Wl,/usr/pkg/lib
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=        /usr/pkg/lib/pkgconfig

There are messages about /usr/pkg/lib that changing, or
using environment variables like LD_LIBRARY_PATH or LD_RUN_PATH will
help but they don't apply. I guess they are correct for NetBSD but not
for Linux or other system where pkgsrc is artificially added.

Please document the above settings (or any other that works) in
pkgsrc guide.

2. bmake is unstoppable after Ctrl-C. It's documented some years ago
but it's still the same. And it'd good if in PR page there is link to

I hope the above to get fixed so that pkgsrc is more pleasant to
work with on Linux.

Ognyan Kulev