ports vs. new pkg tool (was: Qpopper Port)

[Matthias Andree]

[Bryan, perhaps the pkg-message for portmaster needs revision. Look for
occurrences of your name in this message.]

Am 16.01.2014 01:08, schrieb Doug Hardie:

> I am going to have to give up maintaining qpopper.  Not because I
> don't have the interest or time, but because I simply cannot update
> any port.  The old port system may have had issues, but it worked!!!

Doug,

I have been running pkg on some of my computers, and not run into a road
block like you did.

> I tried portmaster qpopper to get the latest source.  That failed
> with lots of errors in other ports.  Too many to try to do
> individually.

In some cases, tools alone cannot fully upgrade the ports on your
system, and the /usr/ports/UPDATING file lists changes, sorted by date
(newest first) and qualified with port origins, that you must do
MANUALLY for a successful upgrade.  I suspect your first...

> I then used pkg_delete to delete all ports.  Repeated
> portmaster qpopper.  Portmaster no longer exists.  Tried pkg_add -r
> portmaster.  Message to setsomething in /etc/make.conf.  Did that and
> then tried to run pkg2ng as it requested.  pkg2ng does not exist.
> Its not a port either.  Dead end.  Went to
> /usr/ports/port-mgmt/portmaster and did a make.  Get errors that file
> names are misspelled.

...portmaster run bumped into such an obstacle described in
/usr/ports/UPDATING and started failing.  It is portmaster's policy to
first upgrade all requisites, and then the package you want upgraded.

But note that the message you got from installing portmaster starts "If
you want to switch to the new pkg(8) format," -- if you can answer that
for yourself with "no", you can safely ignore the remainder, about the
WITH_PKGNG in make.conf (or remove that again), and use portmaster as
before.

Bryan, portmaster's pkg-message is a non-starter in case the pkg tools
are not yet installed, and should mention - on systems that do not ship
pkg - that before the user can run pkg2ng, he would need to install the
ports-mgmt/pkg port.


Doug, if you want to make the switch, pkg2ng is part of the
ports-mgmt/pkg package, and only once you install and run pkg2ng is that
particular computer sold on running the new pkg tools.

Typing "pkg" as a command should present you with a query whether you
want to install the pkg tools, with a default of "no", I get this:

| $ pkg
| The package management tool is not yet installed on your system.
| Do you want to fetch and install it now? [y/N]:

> Perhaps the new port system can be used by those who spend their day
> using it, but for those of us who have real work to do and only use
> it when needed, its just not viable.

The idea is that the pkg tool makes that easier, and ultimately "pkg
upgrade" would fetch signed binary packages from the project for a
quicker upgrade, or "pkg install PACKAGENAME" installs PACKAGENAME from
a signed binary package that gets downloaded.

pkg is new and thus has a few rough edges, but for me, the traditional
ways still work.