Re: Bob v0.1.0 ready for beta testing

[David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>]

On Mon, 22 Dec 2025 at 10:44, Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%pkgsrc.org@localhost> wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> As some of you know I've been working on a new build tool that is
> designed to provide an alternative to pkg_chk/pkgrr/pbulk for most
> situations.
>
> It's now at the stage where it works reasonably well across NetBSD,
> Linux, and SunOS, and I'd like to get some user feedback on what
> features you'd like, what doesn't work, what needs better docs, etc.

This... is a quite delightful Christmas present  - thanks :)

Just had a quick whirl, and only have a couple of small items of feedback

- Is it recommended to "cargo install pkgbob" and all other steps as
root (docs imply but do not state)

- The setup notes for "bob init <path>" do not mention that <path>
must not already be present - might it be possible to for it also
accept an empty dir?

- Would it be possible to clarify how "ensure that their home
directory is created inside the sandbox" might best be managed - I set
the build user but did not do anything specific to create a home
directory inside the sandbox and all seems to work?

- I have a reasonably large (~57G) tmpfs which I had been using via
WRKOBJDIR?=/var/obj/pkg - would it make sense to just set basedir
under the tmpfs

- While it is obvious from the config.lua, it might be nice to note in
the docs which config values (such WRKOBJDIR and MAKE_JOBS) are
overridden by bob, and under which circumstances (presumably if the
config sets with ?= they will be overridden, but not with =)

*many*, *many* thanks for this!

David