Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 09:14:46 +1100 From: Mark.Andrews@isc.org To: Joe Kelsey <joek@mail.flyingcroc.net> Cc: FreeBSD GNOME <freebsd-gnome@FreeBSD.ORG>, freebsd-stable <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG>, freebsd-ports <freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: WARNING: portupgrade considered harmful Message-ID: <200302282214.h1SMEk4U081635@drugs.dv.isc.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 28 Feb 2003 11:01:12 -0800." <3E5FB1F8.4050405@mail.flyingcroc.net>
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> Some time ago, the maintainers of the pkgtools slipped a new ability > into portupgrade: the ability to silently move "obsolete" shared > libraries into /usr/local/lib/compat/pkg. This so-called "feature" has > caused me no end of trouble in the last few days. > > The problem is that the "feature" interacts very badly with the > fundamental purpose of portupgrade, which is to detect out-of-date > packages and aid in automatically upgrading them. Unfortunately, the > presence of all of the obsolete libraries accumulating in the compat/pkg > directory only serves to prevent protupgrade from fulfilling its mission > because ld will silently use old, obsolete libraries instead of the new > libraries! > > I have carefully followed recommendations for upgrading various > components on my system, only to discover that the upgrade process has > been foiled by this "feature". For instalce, Xft used to be available > in two versions, Xft and Xft2. Joe Marcus Clarke was careful to warn > everyone when Xft2 replaced Xft to do "portupgrade -fr Xft" to force > reinstallation of Xft, replacing the now obsolete Xft2 with a newversion > of the Xft library and forcing all applications to relink. > > Well, due to the fact that portupgrade silently placed Xft2 in the > compat/pkg directory, this did not happen! I was left with references > to the obsoloet Xft2 *along side* the correct reference to Xft in > binaries! The only way to rid myself of this was to delete the > compat/pkg directory and them start all over with the entire portupgrade > sequence. > > Now, I am left with having to do the whole thing all over due to bad > references to libintl.so.2 instead of libintl.so.4. > > The portupgrade maintainers have perpetrated a disaster in the making on > a lot of unsuspecting people. I recommend that everyone edit their > /usr/local/etc/pkgtools.conf files and add -u to the default portupgrade > switches to prevent this from happening. You may also need to audit all > of your binaries for stale library references. > > This could be a cause of the problems that many seem to have with the > Xft-enabled Mozilla. > > /Joe > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message This seems more to be a problem with how the shared library version numbers were maintained than anything else. You should NEVER have to remove a old shared library if versioning is done correctly. -- Mark Andrews, Internet Software Consortium 1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: Mark.Andrews@isc.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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