How did upgrading applications happen before portupgrade etc?

[Rakhesh Sasidharan]

Hi,

Just a question that struck me today. Before there were the portupgrade 
and other tools for upgrading installed applications to their newer 
versions, how did things work out?

Did one upgrade applications through a series of "make deinstall 
reinstall" commands (I wonder if these commands take care of dependencies 
too) or was there any other way?

I happened to be reading up on how pkgsrc packages are upgraded. And it 
seemed to be sooo complicated. (See this link for some info: 
http://wiki.netbsd.se/How_to_upgrade_packages). The ports system never 
appeared so complicated to me, which is when it struck to inquire how 
things were before portupgrade and other wonderful third party tools came 
into place ...

Thanks,
Rakhesh