My Joyent SmartMachine is currently running the latest (2012Q1 at time of writing) pkgsrc binary build of the pkgsrc pkgs. Unfortunately, this comes with a rather old version of zsh: it comes with zsh 4.2.7 and I want at least zsh 4.3.10.

So how do I solve this? Simple, build my own pkg from the pkgsrc repo. So I duly set about following Joyent's instructions and all seemed to go well until the actual build part:

# pk build shells/zsh-current
20121030-111106: this is ref: refs/heads/trunk, gcc 4.7.0, 64bit ABI, for /opt/local
20121030-111106: skipping 'zfs rollback' functionality, ZFS not delegated properly
20121030-111106: * shells/zsh-current
20121030-111107:   * shells/zsh-current: start
20121030-111504:     shells/zsh-current: BUILD_FAILED in shells/zsh-current
#

A quick look at the log file in log file in /opt/pk/logs/20121030-111106_build_/shells_zsh-current_.log soon revealed the problem:

=> Automatic manual page handling
=> Generating post-install file lists
=> Checking file-check results for zsh-4.3.17
ERROR: ************************************************************
ERROR: The following files are in /opt/local but not in the PLIST:
ERROR:         /tmp/pkgsrc/shells/zsh-current/work/.destdir/opt/local/lib/zsh/4.3.17/zsh/curses.so
*** Error code 1

Stop.
bmake: stopped in /opt/pkgsrc/shells/zsh-current
*** Error code 1

Stop.
bmake: stopped in /opt/pkgsrc/shells/zsh-current

Looks like a problem with the PLIST file. So I had a look in this file and found the following curses.so entry:

# grep curses /opt/pkgsrc/shells/zsh-current/PLIST
${PLIST.dynamic}${PLIST.curses}lib/zsh/${PKGVERSION}/zsh/curses.so
#

Doesn't look like that is right, or at least it isn't on my SmartMachine so I changed the line to...

${PLIST.dynamic}lib/zsh/${PKGVERSION}/zsh/curses.so

... and attempted the build again and voila...

# pk build shells/zsh-current
20121030-112407: this is ref: refs/heads/trunk, gcc 4.7.0, 64bit ABI, for /opt/local
20121030-112407: skipping 'zfs rollback' functionality, ZFS not delegated properly
20121030-112407: * shells/zsh-current
20121030-112408:   * shells/zsh-current: start
20121030-112819:     shells/zsh-current: BUILD_OK
#

... it's worked.

To actually install the pkg, I then still had to manually build the pkg_summary.gz (I think the docs may be missing a step somewhere) before I could install the pkg...

# for a in /opt/pk/packages/trunk/x86_64/All/*.tgz; do pkg_info -X $a >> /opt/pk/packages/trunk/x86_64/All/pkg_summary; done
# gzip pkg_summary
# pkgin -f update
pkg_summary.gz                                                                    100%  445KB 444.8KB/s 444.8KB/s   00:01
cleaning database from https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/sdc6/2012Q2/x86_64/All entries...
cleaning database from file:///opt/pk/packages/trunk/x86_64/All entries...
processing remote summary (https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/sdc6/2012Q2/x86_64/All)...
updating database: 100%
pkg_summary.gz                                                                    100% 2477     2.4KB/s   2.4KB/s   00:00
processing remote summary (file:///opt/pk/packages/trunk/x86_64/All)...
updating database: 100%
# pkgin av | grep zsh
zsh-4.2.7nb2         The Z shell
zsh-4.3.17           The Z shell
#

This means I can now install my version of zsh...

# pkgin in zsh-4.3.17
calculating dependencies... done.

1 packages to be upgraded: zsh-4.2.7nb2

1 packages to be installed: zsh-4.3.17 (7931K to download, 0B to install)

proceed ? [Y/n] y
downloading packages...
symlinking file:///opt/pk/packages/trunk/x86_64/All/zsh-4.3.17.tgz...
removing packages to be upgraded...
removing zsh-4.2.7nb2...
zsh-4.2.7nb2: unregistering info file /opt/local/info/zsh.info
zsh-4.2.7nb2: removing /opt/local/bin/zsh from /etc/shells
pkg_install warnings: 0, errors: 0
installing packages...
installing zsh-4.3.17...
zsh-4.3.17: adding /opt/local/bin/zsh to /etc/shells
zsh-4.3.17: registering info file /opt/local/info/zsh.info
===========================================================================
$NetBSD: MESSAGE,v 1.3 2006/03/11 13:20:15 uebayasi Exp $

`/opt/local/share/doc/zsh/NEWS' contains a summary of important changes
for this version of zsh.

Note that the completion system can now be setup and configured using
the "compinstall" function.  Please read the zshcompsys(1) manual page
for information on how this works.

===========================================================================
pkg_install warnings: 0, errors: 0
reading local summary...
processing local summary...
updating database: 100%
# zsh --version
zsh 4.3.17 (x86_64-sun-solaris2.11)
#

As you can see, I now have my build of ZSH.

Oh yes, the same thing happens when attempting to build zsh 5.0 so you'll need to do the same thing as above.