Date: Mon, 07 Nov 2005 18:30:19 -0600 From: Stephen Hurd <shurd@sasktel.net> To: Alistair <alistair@tyeurgain.free-online.co.uk>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: New user confused by need to do huge upgrade Message-ID: <001e01c5e3fb$99278e50$5200a8c0@backoffice> References: <436FE7FE.7060702@tyeurgain.free-online.co.uk>
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> I installed from two CDs, and got a working KDE system. Now, I want to do > Firefox from ports with my own make.conf for P4 optimisation. Good! So, I > sync with the sources using cvsup (just like emerge --sync) change to the > Firefox ports directory, type "make" and enter dependency hell like has > never been known before. Everything that depends upon GTK2 must be > updated before Firefox can be compiled! > > I thought that FreeBSD would be more stable than Gentoo and Linux distros > in general. I now find that there is the most major release step (5.4 to > 6.0) and within a matter of a few days later, both Gnome and KDE are > subject to huge updates that require many hours (or maybe days - it's not > done yet) of CPU time. > > Maybe I am missing something. However, I just cannot see why this is > right. What I thought that FreeBSD would give me that Gentoo did not is a > coherent system within which deveopment was co-ordinated. Instead, I seem > to find the opposite. The core group can offer a major release of the OS, > while missing the fact that two hugely important development groups are > just days off their own major releases. > > Maybe there is a level of sanity I am missing as a newcomer to BSD, but I > would really like someone to tell me where to find it so that I can stop > having to use this bloody Windows laptop to post here ;-) Heh, essentially the problem is this... before a release, the ports tree is stabalized... everything builds and works together, broken dependencies are fixed, all is good with the world. This is the ports tree which is included in the release. After the release, More Stuff (tm) is added/updated/etc. By doing a cvsup, you asked for the "newest" version of all the ports, one which is not necessarily stable... dependencies may be broken, things may not work etc. Doing a cvsup in ports is like tracking -STABLE for ports. If you had not done the cvsup, FF would have built and installed nicely. IMHO, CVSupping ports is subject to the same caveats as tracking -STABLE (See section 20.2.2 in the handbook)
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