Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 19:32:25 +0100 (BST) From: Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk> To: Peter Matulis <petermatulis@yahoo.ca> Cc: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: portupgrade -ar (why?) Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.62.0510151929020.17106@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: <20051015182303.10817.qmail@web60021.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20051015182303.10817.qmail@web60021.mail.yahoo.com>
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On Sat, 15 Oct 2005, Peter Matulis wrote: > What is the use of specifying the 'r' switch when using the 'a' > switch? > > # portupgrade -ar > > This says to upgrade all ports plus the ones that depend on all > those ports. Am I missing something? Wouldn't "the ones that > depend" be upgraded anyway? Not necessarily. For instance: package P might use library L. A change in L might alter the size and layout of structures exposed to P. The source-level API of L is unchanged; the binary-level ABI is altered. So whilst the source code of P might not have changed, it might (for instance) be using a macro defined by a header in L that will look at the wrong offset in the new structure. These kinds of ABI compatibility problems can be fixed by recompilihng P. -- jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/ Tel +44 (0)117 3317661 http://ioctl.org/jan/ Strive to live every day as though it was last Wednesday.
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