ports structure and improvement suggestions

[Serge Gagnon]

>>>>> On Wed, 10 May 2006, "martinko" == martinko wrote:

  martinko> Serge Gagnon wrote:

  martinko> not speaking of metaports. and, as already said, portupgrade
  martinko> doesn't handle this very well. also editing makefile in
  martinko> conditional way is not good.

  +> That's an other (old and used) subject, but my little experience teach
  +> me that:

  +> 1: the lesser amount of depency you have, the better your system work.
  +> 2: if your system work in this state, don't uppgrade your ports unless
  +> you need this or that new feature or if that there is a security issue.
  +> 3: don't use xxxxxxxxxxx to upgrade your ports.

  martinko> it's about convenience, you know. if you want, for instance, to
  martinko> run gnome, you likely don't want to install all those parts (at
  martinko> least applications) separately. this is where metaport comes in
  martinko> useful.

Sorry, i forgot to cut this parts of your message "not speaking of 
metaports.".

  martinko> also, it's not so easy to not upgrade continually your packages.

I don't think. If they work, just don't touch them.

  martinko> one day portaudit will say one of your packages is vulnerable.
  martinko> and you'd like to upgrade it. but since there are dependencies
  martinko> and you haven't been following the ports tree for quite some
  martinko> time, you'll find out you need to update half of your packages.
  martinko> and doing this after long period of not upgrading is likely
  martinko> to bring more problems and all at the same time. and mind you
  martinko> there's no security branch like with the base system. therefore
  martinko> from my experience it's better to keep your applications
  martinko> (sanely) up to date.

To be VERY honest, I think that I got just one time that kind of problem. I 
mean trying to upgrade a port a fall into one or more problem because the 
rest of the installed port were not up to date.
But, as I said previously, the lesser amount of depency you have...
I think that, to run big machine like gnome or kde, is a choice that you 
have to assume.

  martinko> i'm not sure what xxxxxx is.

It is a tool to upgrade ports that I don't want to name here because I 
don't want to start (another) flamewar about this tool.
-- 
GAGNON serge <serge.gagnon at b2b2c.ca>
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