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Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2008 00:19:00 +0100
From: Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org>
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To: Giorgio Valoti <giorgio_v@mac.com>
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Cc: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: portupgrade: the -P options rarely works
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Giorgio Valoti wrote:
> Hi all,
> I’ve noticed that using the -P option with portupgrade, which should try 
> to fetch the binary version of a package rarely works. Most of the times 
> it tries to fetch the package from the freebsd site, it fails and then 
> proceed to build it from the sources.
> While I can expect from to time that a pre-compiled version of a package 
> to be unavailable, it surprises me to see this so many times.

We can not guarantee that a given package is available at any given 
moment, except during release cycles when the tree is frozen.  The 
continual process of changes and updates mean that from time to time a 
randomly selected package may not be buildable.  However, taken as a 
whole, almost all of the packages are available at any given moment. 
You can check the status for yourself on http://pointyhat.freebsd.org if 
you like.

Kris