Date: Thu, 08 Apr 1999 12:24:58 -0700 (PDT) From: John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com> To: Jacques Vidrine <n@nectar.com> Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: /sys/boot, egcs vs. gcc, -Os Message-ID: <XFMail.990408122458.jdp@polstra.com> In-Reply-To: <199904081908.OAA88107@spawn.nectar.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Jacques Vidrine wrote: > > Maintainers of these ports would appreciate PRs if the dependencies > are broken. The ports infrastructure has the mechanisms necessary to > handle these dependencies, but the port maintainer may not catch > every dependency. I am not saying the dependencies are broken. I'm just lamenting the general problem that it's difficult to upgrade a port that depends on a lot of things. It's a general structural problem, and I don't know how to fix it. Say you've got a bunch of ports that all depend on the same shared library -- maybe libjpeg or libXpm. You've had them installed for a few months, and they all work fine. Now you decide to upgrade one of them, the "foo" port. Oops, it requires a newer version of libjpeg. You have to remove the old libjpeg so that the newer one can be installed without a lot of complaints. Oops, a bunch of other ports used the old libjpeg. Now you have to upgrade those ports too. Oops, some of those ports depend on libXpm, and a new version of it is needed now. Oops, now some other ports that used the old libXpm need to be upgraded. At this point, you throw up your hands, pkg_delete -f everything, and reinstall all your ports from scratch. And the next time you're tempted to upgrade a port, you decide it would be easier to just buy a new machine. :-) John --- John Polstra jdp@polstra.com John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA "Self-interest is the aphrodisiac of belief." -- James V. DeLong To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?XFMail.990408122458.jdp>