Can't build ports on older FreeBSD machine

[RW]

On Monday 18 April 2005 08:58, Brett Glass wrote:
> I've been asked to upgrade some software on an older FreeBSD 4.x box.  (The
> owner is getting ready to move to a new box with 4.11 but can't take the
> machine out of production just yet.) I upgraded all of the ports via CVS,
> and then discovered that none of them would build. When I try to build a
> port, I get messages like
>
> "/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4852: Malformed conditional
> (defined(USE_RCORDER) || defined(USE_RC_SUBR) && ${USE_RC_SUBR:U} != "YES")
>
> I'm not sure, but it appears that the master Makefile for the ports
> collection was updated during the CVS update and requires features that the
> "make" utility which shipped with that version of FreeBSD doesn't have.
> (Correct me if I'm wrong here, but that's what it looks like at first
> glance.) How can I build ports on that box? Note that I may be in a bit of
> a Catch-22 situation, since any solution that requires installing a new
> "make" won't work if I have to build it from a port.

The canonical solution is to upgrade world & kernel to 4.11.