mktool

This is a collection of utilities that provide alternate implementations for parts of the pkgsrc mk infrastructure.

Benchmarks

The main focus is on performance. Here are some real-world numbers showing improvements seen, compared to the baseline shell/awk implementations:

User Improvements

As well as superior performance, where possible mktool also aims to provide an improved user experience. For example the fetch replacement features a significantly better progress bar and streamlined output compared to other available fetch backends (see terminal recording).

Installation

The preferred method of installation is using cargo:

$ cargo install mktool

and adding the following to mk.conf:

FETCH_USING=            mktool
TOOLS_PLATFORM.mktool=  ${HOME}/.cargo/bin/mktool

However there is also a pkgtools/mktool package if you prefer to use that.

The necessary changes to pkgsrc were committed on 2024-10-11. If you are running a pkgsrc older than this date and still want to use mktool then you will have to apply this commit yourself manually.

Commands

These are the commands currently implemented:

All of the replacements are activated upon setting TOOLS_PLATFORM.mktool, with the exception of fetch which also requires FETCH_USING=mktool in case the user has specific requirements for their fetch program.

In addition, packages no longer have build dependencies on pkgtools/digest and pkgtools/mktools (unless specifically requested), which provides a reasonable boost to performance in bulk builds.

FAQ

Will This Ever Be Mandatory?

No. pkgsrc supports over 20 operating systems, and on NetBSD alone 16 different CPU architectures. I've spent over a decade as the primary advocate for portability in pkgsrc. Rust will never support all of those systems, so the default will always be the portable shell and awk scripts. I would be the first person to reject any move towards a non-portable pkgsrc.

What Is The Minimum Support Rust Version?

Currently 1.74.0.

The edition is set to 2021, so in theory I'd like to have 1.56.0 as the MSRV, but newer releases are currently required due to clap and tokio dependency requirements.