If you’ve ever installed pkgsrc packages from source, you probably typed ‘bmake install’.  There’s a ‘bin-install’ target that will use binary packages if they are available, but you have to set the appropriate environment variables to do so.

It’s now much easier, on DragonFly.  If you have pkgsrc-current as of yesterday or later, or pkgsrc-2011Q1 when it arrives, you can type ‘bmake bin-install’ for a pkgsrc application and it will download the binary package automatically, if it’s available, and build from source if it’s not.

This is a setup I’ve wanted for a while – the speed of a binary install, plus a fallback if the binary isn’t available.