From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Feb 25 08:58:51 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2CA6D16A420 for ; Sat, 25 Feb 2006 08:58:51 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from chandanh@gmail.com) Received: from zproxy.gmail.com (zproxy.gmail.com [64.233.162.196]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 748D543D49 for ; Sat, 25 Feb 2006 08:58:50 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from chandanh@gmail.com) Received: by zproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id m22so497537nzf for ; Sat, 25 Feb 2006 00:58:50 -0800 (PST) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:organization:user-agent:x-accept-language:mime-version:to:subject:references:in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=MB2UI04yymJcMnKIZ8gLorIt/A4QwnD9CNWqdRjCEJsVlS02R8AzEpYWhC7blGW0hMdFVpJqJ9ROZK4Jq1hiAdaJTaxN6UE+GxMJQLt17Tl0Kt9DpdpoBEEhWT4sPl+f2iDZBbw8zpuO22YmQxsgJChxuisV0ES54O0a9cn7VM4= Received: by 10.36.8.10 with SMTP id 10mr1177083nzh; Sat, 25 Feb 2006 00:58:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from ?192.168.0.100? ( [59.144.39.232]) by mx.gmail.com with ESMTP id 24sm1622164nzn.2006.02.25.00.58.48; Sat, 25 Feb 2006 00:58:49 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <44001DB9.2000503@gmail.com> Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 14:34:57 +0530 From: Chandan Haldar Organization: TISRA User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <43F96644.3070306@gmail.com> <43F99F17.1040407@gmail.com> <43FA1C37.1070607@childeric.freeserve.co.uk> <43FC66DD.1080408@gmail.com> <44bqwwdafb.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> In-Reply-To: <44bqwwdafb.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Trading cautiously on new ports X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 08:58:51 -0000 I managed to recover from my misadventures (trying to upgrade gnome) the dumb way, namely, by reinstalling FreeBSD (6.0 Release) and the ports from the ISO CD images. Fortunately the process is fast and painless. Hats off to the folks who make the ISO images. I have over 300 ports installed. The only inconsistency I encountered so far was the unavailability of pdflib 6.0.1 as a dependency for gnuplot. Looks like only pdflib 6.0.2 is available on the net at the moment and gnuplot port in the ISO CD refuses to build with pdflib 6.0.2 sources. This led me to find out how to check out the effects of installing a new port or new versions of installed ports (from a portsnap fetch or cvsup download) non-destructively by extracting the new version of a port as a non-root user in a different ports directory, for example: "portsnap -p /home/myports extract print/pdflib" and by attempting to build the new port version with "make" rather than with "make install clean". This way I have no risk of upsetting my installed ports (installed as root) since anyway I cannot write in /usr/local or /usr/X11R6 etc as the non-root user. Once I see that the new port build finds all the installed dependency ports in order and the build completes without surprises, I rebuild it as root, deinstall the previous port version, and install the new one or can do a portsnap extract followed by a portupgrade (this time into /usr/ports) safely. I did this for pdflib+gnuplot. Have to try this on a large and complex port such as gnome. I understand that there is no such thing as "solving the stale dependency problem once and for all" (thanks for all the illuminating discussion on the ports/packages). But is there a clean command for reporting the dependencies (with versions) of a new port or a new port version without actually attempting to make/install/ or upgrade it? And may be such a command also shows the versions of these dependencies installed on the system at the moment, so that one can have a sneak preview of any upgrade trouble brewing? The closest to this I see is "pkg_add -n" but it requires a built package. I was hoping that there was a way to do this kind of dependency analysis by extracting the dependencies from the ports descriptions, but I haven't been able to figure out the commands necessary for that. Sometimes a potentially complex upgrade is not life-critical and may be I want to upgrade only if I'm sure that it won't lead to the kind of chaos I landed myself into with my gnome upgrade attempt. Until I see a safe way such as the above, I'll probably wait till the next suitable ISO CDs to upgrade major stuff such as FreeBSD itself, X11, and Gnome. Chandan