Compatability with FreeBSD Ports [debian package tools]

[Freddie Cash]

On August 17, 2005 11:06 am, Michel Talon wrote:
> Matthew Dillon wrote:
> >    Illusion.   Every time I have ever used portupgrade, the result
> > has been a completely broken system.  Every time.

> This is nice to know, i was under the impression i was so dumb as
> being unable to use portupgrade (yes, my experience is not far from
> yours) when so many people swear on the bible that they regularly
> upgrade their machine with portupgrade without a single hiccup :-)

As with all things in life, it depends on how you use it.  :)

If you avoid the -a option, only use -r and -R when you know exactly 
which parts will be upgraded and what order they will be upgraded in, 
and only do a couple apps at a time, then it works wonderfully.

I used it regularly on my home servers, my work laptop, 15 firewalls, 12 
proxy servers, 2 e-mail servers, and a couple of workstations (running 
FreeBSD 4.x, 5.x, and 6-CURRENT) from the time it hit the ports tree to 
now without ever hosing a system or an app upgrade (with the exception 
of the first time I tried to upgrade perl or KDE without reading 
UPDATING).  And that includes perl, X, and KDE upgrades.  I've since 
moved package building to a central build server and only use the -PP 
option to portupgrade on the remote systems, and it still works fine.

I see a lot of posts on various forums and mailing lists where people 
have hosed their systems, and every single one of them starts out "I 
ran portupgrade -arR and now my system is hooped".  And everytime I get 
people to re-do the upgrade without using -arR, things work for 
them.  :)

IMO, it would be nice if the -a, -r, and -R options were removed from 
portupgrade.  :)  But, then, nobody would have anything to complain 
about or to fix, since their systems would still be running 
correctly. :D

-- 
Freddie Cash, CCNT CCLP        Helpdesk / Network Support Tech.
School District 73             (250) 377-HELP [377-4357]
fcash-ml at xxxxxxxxxx