From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Nov 3 14: 7:38 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-27-149-77.mmcable.com [24.27.149.77]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id EB44E37B4CF for ; Fri, 3 Nov 2000 14:07:30 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 39282 invoked by uid 100); 3 Nov 2000 22:07:24 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14851.14108.599735.258946@guru.mired.org> Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 16:07:24 -0600 (CST) To: Jochem Kossen Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: updating packages (binary updates) In-Reply-To: <105670775@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Jochem Kossen types: > Hi, > I read through the FreeBSD handbook, especially the section covering > ports/packages, but updating packages is mentioned nowhere. > Is there a convenient way to update packages? Nope. > I don't mean using CVS,CVSup,CTM (source updates) but binary updates, like > this is arranged in Linux using RPM and DEB. RPM is convenient? Oof. I hope FreeBSD does better than that we get around to doing more than a stopgap package system. Until then, though, ports are easier to deal with than packages. > Or is it possible to just pkg_add if there is already an old > version of installed? Yes, you can do that, but it's not recommended. It probably overwrites files in the old package with files from the new one, which means you can't delete the old package without breaking the new one. Of course, there's a good chance there are files in the old package that aren't in the new one, so deleting just the new one will leave cruft on your disk. > I guess pkg_delete and then pkg_add doesn't solve > this problem, because of the dependencies... Just do "pkg_delete -f " to force the deletion, then "pkg_add " to install the new one. However, this may well break some of the packages that depended on the new one, even if there's not a new version of the package that depended on things. On the other hand, those require you to install a newer version of the dependent package. What rpm does is overkill for this kind of thing, though. You really don't want all your old packages updated with new ones; you just want the packages that depend on this one updated, etc.