From owner-freebsd-ports Sat Aug 2 18:46:03 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA26971 for ports-outgoing; Sat, 2 Aug 1997 18:46:03 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fly.HiWAAY.net (root@fly.HiWAAY.net [208.147.154.56]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA26958; Sat, 2 Aug 1997 18:45:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nexgen.hiwaay.net by fly.HiWAAY.net; (8.8.6/1.1.8.2/21Sep95-1003PM) id UAA12727; Sat, 2 Aug 1997 20:45:04 -0500 (CDT) Received: from nexgen (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by nexgen.hiwaay.net (8.8.6/8.8.4) with ESMTP id UAA04956; Sat, 2 Aug 1997 20:44:57 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199708030144.UAA04956@nexgen.hiwaay.net> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0zeta 7/24/97 To: ports@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG, stable@FreeBSD.ORG From: dkelly@hiwaay.net Subject: Re: ports-current/packages-current discontinued Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Sat, 02 Aug 1997 20:42:00 -0500 Sender: owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I trimmed the individual addresses from this reply but wonder if it really should be going to (3) FreeBSD lists? Maybe its time to consider a change in a bit different direction. Is anyone familiar with the inst system SGI uses? Its almsost unmanagable from an ASCII terminal but with the graphic tool its simple enough for my boss. Every component SGI provides is registered in their installation history. Some are not optional. Others are. And the inst tool knows what is required for what, and when a newer version is installed it knows what to delete. Try to install something without the prerequisites and it'll tell you exactly what is missing, and if its available you'll be offered the chance to install it too. Otherwise you may be swapping CDs until you find it. Needless to say, this would make it very easy for someone to delete all of TCL or perl or whatever from a base FreeBSD system if we had it. Or to install it. It would be handy for me right now as I've had some system freezes, possibly always in X (one time it rebooted in the middle of the night for no reason, one time in 2 years) and I'm about to make XFree86-3.3. Would be nice to be able to cleanly remove the prior version from underneath first. Maybe in the short term utilities such as TCL, perl, and x11 should be registered in /var/db/pkg even if they are part of the base installation so they could be removed later? It means other components which require these items would also have to be registered as a package. One hitch in the FreeBSD package system that SGI doesn't have is the concept of "upgrade". If I replace version 2.8 of something with version 2.9, to cleanly do it now I have to remove 2.8. But if other packages depend on it, then I can't delete it without deleting everything that depends on it. Of course there is always the problem of packages that work with 2.8 and not 2.9... Supposedly SGI tests for this before releasing the new one. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.