portsdb and cvsup

[Rakhesh Sasidharan]

Adam J Richardson wrote:

> Rakhesh Sasidharan wrote:
>> During my first few days with FreeBSD, however, I used to run ''portsdb 
>> -Fu''. My understanding is that that would fetch the INDEX-6 and update 
>> INDEX-6.db (since I am on FreeBSD 6.x) but I don't see why I should do this 
>> coz the INDEX files are updated when I update the ports tree anyways! (If I 
>> have understood this incorrectly, someone please correct me).
>
> Hi Rakhesh,
>
> What you say about the -F and -u flags sounds right. It's my understanding 
> that "portsdb -Fu" is only required when the ports database gets a little bit 
> messed up and the system prompts you. It's an easy one to remember, because 
> as Dru said in that article, you may be thinking something similar at the 
> time. ;)

Heh, that really was a good mnemonic from Dru to remember these switches.

BTW, Dru was talking about ''pkgdb -fu''. Different command, and 
lower-case "f". And that was for when the *packages* database gets messed 
up. At which point you'll probably have thoughts along that line in your 
head ... :)

After some thought, I think the "-F" switch to ''portsdb'' is useful if 
you want to just search for what's new etc by downloading the latest copy 
of the INDEX file and using that instead of downloading the ports tree 
changes. That way, if you are into the portupgrade tools, you can do a 
''portsdb -Fu'' to get the latest INDEX files and update INDEX.db. You can 
search for ports using ''pkg_glob''. And you can find what's newer 
compared to the installed software using ''portversion''. No need to 
update your ports tree to do all this!

Regards,
Rakhesh