Re: Compatability with FreeBSD Ports [debian package tools]

[Garance A Drosihn <drosih@xxxxxxx>]

At 6:47 PM +0200 8/17/05, Michel Talon wrote:
> Hiten Pandya wrote:
> > Extremely important to get binary package management right,
> > including dependency handling, (automatic) updating.
>
> If it was not for these softs, and some other softs like Gnome,
> which are constantly broken for any reason, i have the impression
> (illusion?) that portupgrade -PP would do the job perfectly.

I have had very good luck with portupgrade, on multiple freebsd
systems on multiple platforms.  I do avoid the biggies like KDE
or Gnome, which obviously helps.

That said, I do not quite trust 'portupgrade -PP'.  Portupgrade
is a great tool, but (IMO) you can't use it blindly.  What I do
is 'pkg_version -vL =' to see what packages need to be updated.
I then pick some subset of packages which *I* think are the most
important, and I try 'portupgrade -Rr -n' with them.  If they
pull in some other package, and I don't have any objection to
that other package, then I'll redo the 'portupgrade -Rr -n' with
the extra package.  Once I get a list where the packages I specify
on 'portupgrade -Rr -n' match the packages which it claims it will
build, *then* I do 'portupgrade -Rr' without the '-n'.

In some cases I'll wait to upgrade some packages, because I've
noticed email from other users who have had trouble with those
packages.  Note that this is not a problem with *portupgrade*,
it's a problem with the original package(s).  Portupgrade won't
save you if the port itself is wrong in some subtle manner.

What it boils down to is that *none* of these package-tracking
systems are completely reliable.  This thread is going to go on
forever if everyone keeps "voting no" on some package-system
because of problems they've seen with it.  Pick something, and
go with it, and just admit to yourself that "this sucks, but at
least it's something we can do right now".

--
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad@xxxxxxxxxxx
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih@xxxxxxx