Hi, pkg_add(1) is about the hardest program in base to get patches into, even for experienced developers who know what they are doing, even if the patches are of reasonable quality and well thought out. Almost all of my own attempts at improving it led to nowhere, with very few exceptions for very simple fixes of the most obvious bugs, and even those exceptions were almost never easy to bring to fruition. I say that after having committed more than 2.000 times in very diverse parts of OpenBSD. pkg_add(1) is very hard and no place at all for beginners.
The responsible developer is both chronically overworked and very picky about keeping the structure of the program in a particular style, and that style is *extremely* unsusual and extremely hard to read, understand, and maintain. I'm saying that as someone who has been doing professional, object-oriented Perl programming in the software industry for more than half a decade. So Luke, don't bother submitting patches to pkg_add(1). Don't bother doing *anything* in a sloppy way for OpenBSD, that would be nothing but a waste of time. We expect very careful work even for the smallest suggestions. What you are thinking about is ridiculously high over your head. Besides, you are not making any sense whatsoever. You probably shouldn't try to submit any patches whatsoever, but instead try to acquire basic skills using the system in simple ways and expressing your thoughts clearly. Yours, Ingo

