Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 11:41:45 -0700 From: Mark Shepard <mns@MetaThink.COM> To: Patryk Zadarnowski <patrykz@mycenae.ilion.eu.org> Cc: Christian Carstensen <cc@devcon.net>, Chris Costello <chris@calldei.com>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: updating packages automatically... Message-ID: <19990928114145.A41493@ed209.home> In-Reply-To: <199909260056.KAA10829@mycenae.ilion.eu.org>; from Patryk Zadarnowski on Sun, Sep 26, 1999 at 10:56:31AM %2B1000 References: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909260107540.2174-100000@pauling.research.devcon.net> <199909260056.KAA10829@mycenae.ilion.eu.org>
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Patryk Zadarnowski said: > > On Sat, 25 Sep 1999, Chris Costello wrote: > > > > > Aah! No! I tried that with GNOME once and it drove me insane > > > for about two weeks. > > > > > > Auto-upgrades on ports would be _very_ _very_ bad, especially > > > for those using apache from ports! > > > > that's right. i thought about having some kind of exclude list for ports > > that shall never be upgraded automatically. anyway, the script will just > > generate a shell script output. it should not replace packages without > > manual intervention. > > If most FreeBSD users are like me, you should set up an include list > instead. Then, it could actually be sort of useful. Most people would > use it to auto-upgrade packages for beta and other unstable software. > > However, I think that an /etc/periodic/weekly script that reports on > which packages are outdated in the weekly report would be a much more > welcome utility ;) I also don't think I would actually use an auto-upgrade feature, or at best I'd only use it on a very few ports (can't think of any at the moment). The biggest problem I see would be coordinating the update with any currently executing instances of the old port -- could cause unexpected crashes because a config file format or shared library has changed, for instance. I _like_ the idea of a email-summary of "What's New in the World of Ports". Some suggestions: - Automatic (background) downloading of distfiles for updated packages, so that when I see the "What's New" email and feel "in the mood" for some sysadmin, I don't have to wait to download the distfiles. Everything I need is already at hand, so I can just "make install." I save time, and possibly bandwidth charges also (assuming downloads happen at night). This should fetch the primary distfile and all updated dependency distfiles. It should check for free disk space, and also allow a include/exclude list since it's really the big ports (like gnome-*) where the download/thumb twiddling time becomes a significant part of the "install" time. - Since I'm wishing :-) In the What's New email, I'd like to see a paragraph summary of what's changed for each port I have installed. Ideally (and unrealistically), all software authors would put this info in a standard format for each release... More pragmatically, the port maintainer could update the information (downside is this requires scarce human labor AND changing human habits, but perhaps a compromise would be to define a standard for conveying this info and let the port maintainers choose to do so or not... for instance, in each port, in addition to pkg/DESCR and pkg/COMMENTS, there could be a pkg/WHATSNEW file which would summarize features/bugs new in the _current_ version of the port... a port maintainer could simply copy the announcement email into this file). As a last resort, the pkg_version tool could apply a heuristic of looking for common files like ChangeLog or README in the newly downloaded distfile, extracting said file(s) and diff'ing against the same files from the previous version of the port. This "What's Changed" summary would be very useful for me -- without this, I don't know if it's worthwhile to upgrade and I expect many users of FBSD, as opposed to hackers (who I expect track the latest version of everything), would feel as I do. If it ain't broken, I don't want to waste time "fixing" it :-) Finally, one other feature I've been thinking of (shouldn't necessarily be part of the above): - Before I do a "make install", is there some way to find out exactly which dependencies of the port I'm installing are also going to need to be upgraded? Ideally, "make install -n" would show this, but the output is cluttered with shell-commands... Basically, I'd like some simple way to estimate the work actually required in upgrading a port before I start the "make install" process. It doesn't have to be exact... (for instance, upgrading pgp requires knowing how USA_RESIDENT will be defined.) This lets me better estimate if I can upgrade _now_, or if I need to put it off 'til I have more time. Of course, if such a feature was available, it would make sense to include this info for each port in the automatically-generated "What's New" email. Mark Shepard mns@metathink.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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