UPDATING - needs updating?

[Ion-Mihai Tetcu]

On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:06:00 -0800
Vizion <vizion at vizion.occoxmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday 21 November 2005 12:57,  the author Ion-Mihai Tetcu
> contributed to the dialogue on-
>  Re: UPDATING - needs updating?: 
> 
> >On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 14:13:35 -0500
> >
> >Wesley Shields <wxs at csh.rit.edu> wrote:
> >> On Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 08:39:55AM -0800, Vizion wrote:
> >> > Hi
> >> >
> >> > I have noticed that some earlier notices relating to some ports
> >> > in UPDATING appear as though they have been made out of data by
> >> > newer notices (e.g  kde 20050804 seems to replace 20050324) and
> >> > sometimes the instructions conflict with one another. While I
> >> > presuime the latest notice always takes precedence I wonder if
> >> > it would be possible to have notices that are no longer current
> >> > removed from UPDATING.
> >>
> >> I think this is probably a bad idea, simply from a historical
> >> perspective.  If I wanted to chase down a bug that was available
> >> only for a specified time period I would like to know the
> >> corresponding UPDATING entries.
> >
> >there are enough old machines out there for which the "old"
> >instructions still apply; in some cases it might not be able to
> >update w/o intermediary steps.
> 
> Interesting perspective..
> 
> You have got me wondering if a web interface could be used to drag
> relevant data from UPDATING based upon the output from pkg_info?

Hmm. I don't see this being a high priority. Your web interface should
also look at depends; if installed ports are very out-of-date it's
possible that one port mentioned in the file will depend on an other;
and you'll want to check MOVED too. What it would be really nice in
regard of automatic processing of UPDATING is to have CATEGORY/PORTNAME
listed on AFFECTS list. I.e.: 20051105:
  AFFECTS: users of x11-toolkits/qt33
- this one I can easily grep (I have the date and the port)

20051105:
  AFFECTS: all users of gnome/glib/gtk
- this one is much harder to process;

I keep ports fairly updated on my machines because I don't want to run
in this king of trouble, but this is not always possible. 


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