portupgrade vs. portmanager

[Michael C. Shultz]

On Friday 24 December 2004 07:54 am, RW wrote:
> On Friday 24 December 2004 07:38, Michael C. Shultz wrote:
> > On Thursday 23 December 2004 11:16 pm, Jay O'Brien wrote:
> > > Michael C. Shultz wrote:
> > > > On Thursday 23 December 2004 10:01 pm, Jay O'Brien wrote:
> > > >>I'm running 5.3 RELEASE and trying to learn. I did a ports
> > > >> cvsup. Following the Dru Lavigne article on portupgrade at
> > > >>http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/08/28/FreeBSD_Basics.html?
> > > >>page =1 I installed portupgrade and then ran portsdb -Uu. It
> > > >> errored out, telling me that I shouldn't use my "refuse" file
> > > >> that stopped the non- english docs and ports from being loaded
> > > >> on my HD.
> > > >>
> > > >>In trying to understand this issue, I found portmanager, and it
> > > >> looks like it would perform the same function as portupgrade.
> > > >>
> > > >>My questions: Is there a way around the "refuse" file
> > > >> prohibition, perhaps with portmanager? Does portmanager
> > > >> replace portupgrade?
> > > >
> > > > portmanager doesn't require the INDEX files to keep ports up to
> > > > date, so the refuse file is a non issue with it.
> > > >
> > > > -Mike
> > >
> > > Sounds good. What's the downside, if any, to using portmanager
> > > instead of portupgrade?
> >
> > All of your ports will be built with the correct dependencies, they
> > will work better leaving you less to complain about in the mail
> > lists and so you will become bored.  Because everything is working
> > exactly as it should you may begin to think you are a Maytag repair
> > man, nothing much to do, just always setting around waiting for
> > something to break.....
>
> I don't use portmanager myself, but isn't it the case that
> portmanager rebuilds not just ports that have newer versions in the
> ports tree, but also all ports that recursively depend on those
> ports.

That is indeed the case with portmanager. Sometimes it is a waste
of time to rebuild everthing when a dependency changes, and sometimes
it is the right thing to do, portmanager assumes it is always the right 
thing to do. One way this has proved to be a benefit is I've never
had to run the special scripts when gnome is updated because after
running portmanager everything is already up to date.

>
> I just updated kdehier with portupgrade in about a minute. The whole
> of KDE depends on kdehier, so presumably portmanager would have taken
> several days, and kdehier isn't particularly unusual. I would see
> that as a major downside.

Here is from misc/kdehier/pkg_descr:

Utility port which installs a hierarchy of common KDE directories

So what if this port changes the location of some KDE directories?  If 
you don't also update KDE then add or update something like kdepim, 
maybe kdepim will expect files in one place due to kdehier but kdelibs 
will have them in another because you never rebuilt kdelibs when 
kdeheir changed locations around.

So even if kde takes several days to build, so what, I still use my 
system no problem for other things while portmanager is running,
when its done I'll restart X or reboot to get all the new libraries 
loaded and press on.  In the past year I've never had so much as
one kde app crash where when I used portupgrade it was a fairly regular
occurrence. 

While I don't personally use gnome I keep it on my system, and when ever 
I see everyone complaining that it doesn't work I give it a try, and it 
always does for me.  As far as UPDATING goes, the first entry in it is 
20040204, from that point to today the only thing I've had to follow in 
it is was the change to mpeg4ip   20041111.
>
> When it's necessary UPDATING will suggest running portupgrade  -rf to
> force rebuilding. That kind of UPDATING entry is in a small minority,
> which suggests to me that most of the problems with ports don't stem
> from the sequence of their updating, so I can't see how portmanager
> is any kind of magic-bullet.

Perhaps you should actually try it instead of just assuming.....

-Mike