From owner-freebsd-current Thu Apr 8 12:27: 2 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from wall.polstra.com (rtrwan160.accessone.com [206.213.115.74]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5C5E314CFC for ; Thu, 8 Apr 1999 12:27:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jdp@polstra.com) Received: from vashon.polstra.com (vashon.polstra.com [206.213.73.13]) by wall.polstra.com (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id MAA14797; Thu, 8 Apr 1999 12:24:59 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jdp@polstra.com) Received: (from jdp@localhost) by vashon.polstra.com (8.9.2/8.9.1) id MAA79735; Thu, 8 Apr 1999 12:24:59 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jdp@polstra.com) Message-ID: X-Mailer: XFMail 1.3 [p0] on FreeBSD X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <199904081908.OAA88107@spawn.nectar.com> Date: Thu, 08 Apr 1999 12:24:58 -0700 (PDT) Organization: Polstra & Co., Inc. From: John Polstra To: Jacques Vidrine Subject: Re: /sys/boot, egcs vs. gcc, -Os Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Jacques Vidrine wrote: > > Maintainers of these ports would appreciate PRs if the dependencies > are broken. The ports infrastructure has the mechanisms necessary to > handle these dependencies, but the port maintainer may not catch > every dependency. I am not saying the dependencies are broken. I'm just lamenting the general problem that it's difficult to upgrade a port that depends on a lot of things. It's a general structural problem, and I don't know how to fix it. Say you've got a bunch of ports that all depend on the same shared library -- maybe libjpeg or libXpm. You've had them installed for a few months, and they all work fine. Now you decide to upgrade one of them, the "foo" port. Oops, it requires a newer version of libjpeg. You have to remove the old libjpeg so that the newer one can be installed without a lot of complaints. Oops, a bunch of other ports used the old libjpeg. Now you have to upgrade those ports too. Oops, some of those ports depend on libXpm, and a new version of it is needed now. Oops, now some other ports that used the old libXpm need to be upgraded. At this point, you throw up your hands, pkg_delete -f everything, and reinstall all your ports from scratch. And the next time you're tempted to upgrade a port, you decide it would be easier to just buy a new machine. :-) John --- John Polstra jdp@polstra.com John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA "Self-interest is the aphrodisiac of belief." -- James V. DeLong To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message