Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 00:23:31 +0100 From: Cliff Sarginson <cls@willow.raggedclown.intra> To: FreeBSD Questions <FreeBSD-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Portupgrade -- revisited Message-ID: <20030302232331.GD1066@willow.raggedclown.intra> In-Reply-To: <200303021447.51087.kstewart@owt.com> References: <20030302192233.GA326@willow.raggedclown.intra> <200303021533.49566.taxman@acd.net> <20030302223753.GB1066@willow.raggedclown.intra> <200303021447.51087.kstewart@owt.com>
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On Sun, Mar 02, 2003 at 02:47:51PM -0800, Kent Stewart wrote: > On Sunday 02 March 2003 02:37 pm, Cliff Sarginson wrote: > > On Sun, Mar 02, 2003 at 03:33:49PM -0500, taxman wrote: > > > On Sunday 02 March 2003 02:22 pm, Cliff Sarginson wrote: > > > > At the risk of being accused of a complainer. > > > > I will state here that my experiments in the use of portupgrade, > > > > have left me without a useable X system. > > > > Guess it is back to the CD's. > > > > Will the ports maintainers *please* make sure they release > > > > compilable ports..especially for the big mothers like X/KDE. > > > > > > Cliff, it's worked fine for me. I installed all of KDE3 from > > > ports. Got virtually no errors, but I did do it by uninstalling > > > almost all of my installed ports. So yes portupgrade for something > > > that large did not work. Try making packages out of what ports you > > > have installed. Then uninstalling and reinstalling them shouldn't > > > be too bad. > > > And you've got to understand the complexity problems involved > > > here. There are 8200 or so ports right now. Each has as many as > > > 60 dependencies (like kde). This creates an incredible web that is > > > very difficult to keep working. The ports maintainers do a great > > > job of this in fact. I agree ! I am not really complaining about their work, I think that the infrastructure is indaequate. Let me be quite clear on this. I think the ports system is very very good. But what is not very very good is the ways mortals have to use it. This is a very complex piece of software engineering, nothing comes close to it, maybe Debian's apt is close. And it is because it is conceptually so good, it gets a lot of criticism, because the tools do not work very well. > > > What is nearly impossible is to have it work perfectly for every > > > given individual installation that may have many thousands of > > > individual configuration changes, versions, old binary, source > > > cruft lying around. So as mentioned before, problems could easily > > > be due to stuff only you have on your system. Try building in a > > > clean environment. If you get the same error in a clean > > > environment then a clear message to the port maintainer with how to > > > repeat the problem is the only way for them to get it working. It > > > doesn't involve knowing how to code in the given language, just > > > useful error messages. > > > An "it doesn't work" is useless and does fall into the complainer > > > side, even if you're not trying to. > > > Well I am trying to be constructive. Not just a compainer...although it sounds that way (having spent 2 unsuccessful days trying to get the latest KDE ports installed). > > > Try that and then ask questions if you can't get something working. > > > > > > Tim > > > > I know, you are right. A complaint in a vacuum is useless, I should > > know better. All I can say is I *wanted* it to work :) > > But (big B) I am using this on a very ordinary computer. It is my > > personal part of the network. No big deals. Of course the whole ports > > system has mind bogglinging complications with something like KDE. > > But (another big B)..I did clean the whole situation up, and still > > stuff will not compile, and not just lib/linking errors .. which are > > kind of understandable, but syntax errors in the C(++) code. Now that > > is wrong. Linking errors are as inevitable as the weather, compilaton > > errors are not. Anyway I will shut up now, just a lover's tiff with > > FreeBSD, won't end in divorce. > > Do you have ports refused? Are you rebuilding INDEX and INDEX.db > everytime you cvsup ports-all. Refuses are known to break the "make > index". Yes I have refuse, I do not speak Japanese or Korean, and I have no interest in "palms". It boils down to this, I could not use portupgrade to install the latest X, because of a missing manual page. So I made the port by using "make -k", and it worked. This is not how it should be. I will think about it. -- Regards Cliff [ This mail has been checked as virus-free ] To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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