Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 18:19:53 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> To: Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com> Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Cleaning old packages (was: Package system flaws?) Message-ID: <20020709161953.GA69779@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <20020709154912.GA20718@dan.emsphone.com> References: <20020709113549.GA249@lpt.ens.fr> <20020709154912.GA20718@dan.emsphone.com>
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Dan Nelson said on Jul 9, 2002 at 10:49:13: > > new package. Suppose you had installed foo-1.3.1, and then another > > port you were installing overwrote this with foo-1.3.2. Now both are > > registered in /var/db/pkg but you can't pkg_delete foo-1.3.1 because > > it will remove files with common names from foo-1.3.2. > > If you use portupgrade to install ports and packages, it will deinstall > the old port before installing the new one. Since you're the third person telling me this (the first two were off-list) let me clarify -- I know about portupgrade. Yes, if I use only portupgrade and nothing else, I won't have the problem. But using portupgrade all the time is totally unrealistic: (1) it has problems with binary packages, and (2) I don't like rebuilding every dependency which has had the most minor of changes every time I install a new port. Besides, portupgrade is not part of the base system, it's an add-on, so in my opinion saying "use portupgrade" is not an answer. If you use the base system tools you *will* run into the problem of duplicate installed packages, rather quickly. I was initially impressed with portupgrade, but after using it a while I realized it solves problems which I don't have and not the ones I have. Mainly, I want dependency tracking (which the ports system supplies already) but I don't want to upgrade old packages automatically unless it's essential or I specifically ask for it. As others have pointed out, what's needed is using version ranges to express dependencies. Portupgrade (pkgdb -F) also has a "fix" for duplicate packages but it doesn't actually remove any redundant files -- it tacks all the +CONTENTS to the most recently installed package and removes the entries of the rest. I think one can do better. Gentoo Linux's (http://www.gentoo.org) "portage" system has a lot of nice ideas worth stealing, in my opinion (in particular it supports version ranges, but other things too). At some point during the next month I was thinking of implementing some gentoo-like features on freebsd for my own use (but since I'm not an expert C programmer I'll probably end up using python or something like that.) - Rahul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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