ports deprecations (was: sysutils/cfs)

[perryh at pluto.rain.com]

Matthias Andree <matthias.andree at gmx.de> wrote:
> Am 10.09.2011 16:08, schrieb perryh at pluto.rain.com:
> > Last I knew, if port X uses services provided by port Y and port
> > Y changes, port X often needs to be rebuilt and reinstalled even
> > though nothing in port X has changed.  AFAIK this has nothing to
> > do with backups.
> > 
> > If you've found a way to avoid ever having to rebuild, say,
> > kdiff3 when something changes in KDE, I'm sure the authors of
> > portupgrade and portmaster would like to hear about it!  It
> > would greatly simplify their job.
>
> Interesting question that you pose.  In cases where only the
> so-called SONAME of libraries in port Y changed, but not that
> part of the ABI that port X used, chances are we might go without
> it for the majority of ports, but that's not done currently.

What about the case where Y's API and SONAME did *not* change, but
its PORTVERSION or PORTREVISION was bumped to reflect a bugfix?
No change to X is needed at all, but

* X may still need to be rebuilt (e.g. if Y is statically linked
  into X's executable(s)), and

* portupgrade/portmaster will probably determine that X needs to
  be rebuilt -- even if it actually doesn't -- because they have
  no way of determining how pertinent the change in Y was to the
  way Y is used in X.

I believe Conrad's original point[1], that a port (X) may need to
be rebuilt and reinstalled even though nothing about it has changed
_or needs to change_, stands.

[1] http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2011-September/070022.html