Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:59:28 +0800 From: darcsis@gmail.com (Denise H. G.) To: Michel Talon <talon@lpthe.jussieu.fr> Cc: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Utility for safe updating of ports in base system Message-ID: <863aqlpvgf.fsf@pluton.xbsd.name> In-Reply-To: <20080320001048.GA39125@lpthe.jussieu.fr> (Michel Talon's message of "Thu\, 20 Mar 2008 01\:10\:48 %2B0100") References: <20080320001048.GA39125@lpthe.jussieu.fr>
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Michel Talon <talon@lpthe.jussieu.fr> writes: > Doug Barton wrote: >> So, I renew my inquiry. :) Is portmaster a suitable candidate to fulfill >> the role of the utility described, and if not, why not? > > At the risk of being flamed, i would venture to say that such an utility > should be able to upgrade things based of *binary* packages, and I think this should be the main usage of a possible `pkg_upgrade', just like `pkg_add -u' in OpenBSD. If one is going to install/upgrade packages without a ports tree in the system, `pkg_upgrade' should be able do all the dependency checkings, downloadings and installings/upgradings. > consequently that portmaster is not a suitable candidate. For example > pkg_add installs a binary package, if you want to compile and install > you run "make all install clean" in the ports tree. One of the > requirements of an upgrade system is predictability, this can only > be achieved by using binary packages. Another requirement, in my opinion, > is speed, and the lack of speed, which is completely hidden when you > compile your packages will be immediately apparent if you try to use > packages. Indeed portupgrade has options -P and -PP to work with > packages which could serve as a prototype for a "pkg_upgrade" written > in C, except that they work poorly, and in particular run slowly. The most inconvenient is that `portupgrade' depends on ruby to run, which makes it a little bit, maybe, annoying. > In my opinion, an example of a correct "pkg_upgrade" type programm > written in C++ is the Debian apt-get. It works predictably, fast, etc. > One of its features, that i consider very important for correct > operation, is that it computes the list of all packages to be deleted > and all packages to be installed and asks the user if he agrees before Yes, I think you are right. The new `pkg_upgrade' should be able to report the unavailability of a package and do a graceful exit. > doing anything. It fetches all necessary packages before installing or > deleting anything. Hence you can be sure that the upgrade process will > not end in a mess if something crashes in the middle, like it is the > case with all present standard FreeBSD upgraders. Actually I don't think a batch download and install process would help much, especially for a freshly installed system because it might be a huge download job and much waiting time if one is going to install GNOME/KDE etc. from scratch. Perhaps the new `pkg_upgrade' could provide versatile options to complete such tasks. -- Denise H. G. <darcsis AT gmail DOT com>
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