From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Oct 20 06:46:53 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8D72416A4BF for ; Mon, 20 Oct 2003 06:46:53 -0700 (PDT) Received: from be-well.ilk.org (lowellg.ne.client2.attbi.com [66.30.200.37]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C316343FB1 for ; Mon, 20 Oct 2003 06:46:52 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org) Received: by be-well.ilk.org (Postfix, from userid 1147) id 269CA3B08; Mon, 20 Oct 2003 09:46:52 -0400 (EDT) Sender: lowell@be-well.ilk.org To: carmoda , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <3F946A80.3050208@carmoda.com> <20031020133402.GA9712@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> From: Lowell Gilbert Date: 20 Oct 2003 09:46:51 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20031020133402.GA9712@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophile.co.uk> Message-ID: <44znfwhvhw.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> Lines: 31 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Subject: Re: errors with dependant packages while installing ports. X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 13:46:53 -0000 Matthew Seaman writes: > On Mon, Oct 20, 2003 at 11:06:40PM +0000, carmoda wrote: > > > I seem to get failures just about every time i try to install anything: > > > > in particular errors with dependant packages: > > > > "An older version of whatever/whatever is already installed..." > > > > now, on attempts to update any of these dependancy packages i break my > > system... so. do i just accept i cannot update or run certain things, or > > is there some trick t this i am missing...? > > > > please 'CC' me as i am on digest mode... > > This is the main problem that portupgrade(1) solves: package > dependency ordering. *Most* of the time, just building from ports instead of installing from packages solves this particular case of the dependency problem. If the new program really *requires* an updated version of the dependency (as opposed to the packages case, where it's linked against that version but could -- typically -- just as easily have been linked against an older version), then you need to update the dependency, and everything else that's dependent on it. This is where portupgrade really saves you an awful lot of (tedious) effort. Telling the two cases apart can be a bit tricky for non-programmers, but building the port will usually tell you.