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Date:      Thu, 29 Sep 2005 17:29:56 -0400
From:      Charles Swiger <cswiger@mac.com>
To:        Milscvaer <millueradfa@yahoo.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Question about packages
Message-ID:  <EB5E16D0-EFAE-4FEF-8B0E-DC398128DFB2@mac.com>
In-Reply-To: <20050929203837.17499.qmail@web54509.mail.yahoo.com>
References:  <20050929203837.17499.qmail@web54509.mail.yahoo.com>

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On Sep 29, 2005, at 4:38 PM, Milscvaer wrote:
> How often are the binary packages in 5-stable for instance
> rebuilt to the latest version? It is pretty critical
> to keep these updated constantly, preferably every
> day, to get the latest security fixes in a new version
> of a package. I noticed that Firefox still seems to be
> at 1.0.6 even though 1.0.7 has been out for several
> days. Does FreeBSD have a system set up where when a
> port is upgraded to a new version, the binary package
> for the port is automatically rebuilt soon after, such
> as at least within the next day so that the latest
> version in ports is also avialable as a binary
> package. This is very essential. I hope such a feature
> can be provided.

The cluster of machines used to build precompiled packages operates  
pretty much continuously, as you can see for yourself at:

http://pointyhat.freebsd.org/errorlogs/

As this link says, "Last full run on 5.x-stable [i386 (2005-09-27  
05:24)]" was two days ago, and a new run is in progress which ought  
to have Firefox 1.0.7 and anything else which has been updated since  
the last run was started.  Note that building 13000 ports takes quite  
a while, so expecting less than 24-hour turnaround for binary  
packages might be too optimistic.

So if you want software updated more quickly, build it yourself--  
updating the 10 ports that you actually use is a lot easier than  
building everything.  Or you could donate more hardware to the  
FreeBSD project, or even set up your own build cluster if you think  
you can do a better job.

> Does also, is anything done to avoid the situation
> where an older program needs an older version of a
> dependancies and a newer program needs a newer version
> of the same depedancy?

Why, yes, people use shared library version numbers, or they install  
to different base prefixes, or any number of similar methods.  For  
popular software like the Berkeley DB, this support is well- 
integrated into the ports system and the options menu that many ports  
will display, using WITH_BDB_VER.  These mechanisms are documented in  
the Porter's Handbook here:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/ 
makefile-options.html#AEN2286

> Does portupgrade leave older versions of a library
> dependancy in place when installing a new version of
> such a dependancy, so that applications that require
> the newer version of the dependancy can use the new
> version, while applications that need the older
> version can use the older version?

Yes, it does.  Consider the output of "du -a /usr/local/lib/compat/"...

-- 
-Chuck




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