From owner-freebsd-ports Sat Mar 8 20:45:06 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA24983 for ports-outgoing; Sat, 8 Mar 1997 20:45:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from scanner.worldgate.com (scanner.worldgate.com [198.161.84.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA24978 for ; Sat, 8 Mar 1997 20:45:02 -0800 (PST) Received: from znep.com (uucp@localhost) by scanner.worldgate.com (8.8.5/8.7.3) with UUCP id VAA02084; Sat, 8 Mar 1997 21:44:26 -0700 (MST) Received: from localhost (marcs@localhost) by alive.znep.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id VAA08370; Sat, 8 Mar 1997 21:42:54 -0700 (MST) Date: Sat, 8 Mar 1997 21:42:53 -0700 (MST) From: Marc Slemko To: Jason Fesler cc: ports@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Getting /usr/ports everywhere... In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970307091430.00918910@pop.calweb.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-ports@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk [-current removed from the cc list] On Fri, 7 Mar 1997, Jason Fesler wrote: > One suggestion: add (if possible) "make refresh" or "make update" > or "make current" or *something* that would allow one to easy update > the PORTS directory to whatever is current for that version of the OS. > I don't know how hard it would be to make that an *efficient* mechanism - > personally, I just suck down the entire tar file to update, but I'm > also not at the end of a 28k modem. The vast majority of the time there is no current ports tree for anything other than -current. Soon after a release ships, the ports tree moves on and gradually begins breaking more and more when used with anything other than -current. That is probably the biggest FAQ about the ports tree. "Q: but it don't compile on (practically any release). A: Yes, that's how it is supposed to be." I think it would be a good idea to make an effort to keep ports compiling with reasonably new versions for as long as possible. For most ports (eg. Apache and rlim_t) it would take only trivial changes to keep them working... yes, it is extra effort and isn't reasonably possible in all cases but I think it is worthwhile.