portupgrade -ar (why?)
Peter Matulis
petermatulis at yahoo.ca
Sat Oct 15 12:08:39 PDT 2005
--- Jan Grant <Jan.Grant at bristol.ac.uk> wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Oct 2005, Peter Matulis wrote:
>
> > What is the use of specifying the 'r' switch when using the 'a'
> > switch?
> >
> > # portupgrade -ar
> >
> > This says to upgrade all ports plus the ones that depend on all
> > those ports. Am I missing something? Wouldn't "the ones that
> > depend" be upgraded anyway?
>
> Not necessarily. For instance: package P might use library L. A
> change in L might alter the size and layout of structures exposed
to P.
> The source-level API of L is unchanged; the binary-level ABI is
> altered. So whilst the source code of P might not have changed, it
might (for
> instance) be using a macro defined by a header in L that will look
> at the wrong offset in the new structure. These kinds of ABI
> compatibility problems can be fixed by recompilihng P.
But still, a port requires upgrading or it does not. Using 'r',
portupgrade ultimately checks whether some port should be upgraded.
Are you saying that the 'r' switch involves a different decision
making process than 'a'?
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