On Fri, Jun 29, 2007 at 07:14:52PM -0400, Michael P. Soulier wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It seems like a lot of people keep their ports regularly up to date by just
> running portupgrade -a. I've seen it online, and in books.
>
> As /usr/ports/UPDATING is rather large, it seems impossible to look for
> potential issues with every package that you're going to upgrade. So, is
> running portupgrade -a a good idea, as you likely haven't checked for issues
> for your system?
>
> Otherwise, the ports change so fast that if you don't regularly update, when
> you do go to upgrade you may find yourself in a difficult position to do so.
I check the output of the following portversion command line to see what
software will be upgraded if I issue the "portupgrade -a" command:
portversion | grep -v =
This ensures that packages with up-to-date versions and no special notes
are ignored. I then compare that list of packages to the UPDATING file
to see if there's anything that requires special attention.
The UPDATING file is organized in reverse chronological order. This
means that you need only read down as far as the first date in the file
that is old enough so you know you've updated since then.
Once I have checked the portversion output against the UPDATING file, I
run this command:
portupgrade -ai
The -i option ensures that it will ask you if you want to upgrade for
each piece of software that needs upgrading, providing a sort of second
line of defense -- in case you overlooked something.
You shouldn't have any problems with software breaking due to lack of due
diligence coupled with incompatible changes in the configuration of ports
if you do that.
--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
W. Somerset Maugham: "The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for
wit."