> Thing is, the "port" hierarchy (hereto I used "NetBSD package system" > for the same concept) provides both the hierarchical structure I > believe is needed to minimise duplication and a description file to > search for concepts rather than file names. So, yes, I agree with a > portion of your suggestion, but not your suggested implementation. In > practice, all I'm proposing is replacing directories owned by > individual contributors with a hierarchy that undergoes a useful > amount of validation.
this is exactly the reason you need to try contrib. if you want to make an überpackage, just make your überpackage depend on everything else. it doesn't need to have any files of its own. i've verified this. it would be a trivial extension (like 2 lines) to have contrib/install recursively install dependencies. - erik
