First, my bias: I find pkg_add superior to many other package management schemes. The fact that you mention having tried so many others is an indication that you have some exposure to many, but also an indication that package management is a continuous evolution, not a once-solved problem.
> 2. Doesn't show how much space it's going to need to install or going > to save if removed. Critical if space is limited. The cheap-shot response has sometimes been "Here's a nickel, go buy some disk space". A more polite answer is that disk space is so cheap these days that it's rarely an issue. Yes, I have run out of space several times during pkg_add, but not in the last several years. Almost all modern hardware allows you to replace disks with bigger disks, affordably and easily. Even if you're using a 10 year old laptop, replacing its HD with an SSD will both speed it up and increase capacity. I have been "guided" in this direction due to hard drives having died, on at least two occasions that I can think of offhand, probably more. > 3. Doesn't show how many or which deps are going to be installed or > going to be removed beforehand. Have to go through the entire process > before all deps are installed or removed. > > 4. Downloads each dep, installs, then downloads next dep.... All the > package managers I tried, I didn't see any other do this. Having > network issues or errors midway leaves deps around. (I had a "Can't > install tkabber-1.1.2p3: can't resolve tcltls-1.6p4" with a failed > install and deps still hanging around.) Probably would be a good idea > to download them first and then install? It will probably make the > process faster too? Probably not faster for that change, and, use pkg_delete -a to remove unneeded dependencies (it doesn't stand for "all"!), and pkg_check if things are actually messed up. > 5. Slow installs and updates compared to other package managers. For > example, if there are no system updates, other package managers are > usually done within seconds. pkg_add -u looks into every package one by > one and takes very long time, even if there are no updates. You have made many suggestions. If you are serious, I'd suggest you look at the code for OpenBSD's package management tools and see if you can improve them. Requests from passive observers don't get much traction here.
