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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 fundamental purpose of portupgrade, which is to detect out-of-date 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
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	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

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