running portupgrade -a

[Randy Pratt]

On Fri, 29 Jun 2007 19:14:52 -0400
"Michael P. Soulier" <msoulier at digitaltorque.ca> 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. 

I've been updating ports daily for several years using portupgrade
since that seemed the best for me.  Doing it on a frequent basis
usually keeps the number of ports changing to a smaller number and
it seems easier to track down any issues that crop up.

> 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?

Its only necessary to check the entries in UPDATING since your last
update.  If you don't check the entries before updating, its
possible that a problem might happen.  The more frequent you update,
the less new entries there are to check of course.

> 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. 

Agreed.  It may even reach the point where so many ports need
updated that it may be just as fast to deinstall all ports and
install fresh.

Frequent updating also gains you more familarity with the ports
system.  I don't think there are any tools that are 100%
perfect and human errors do happen.

HTH

Randy
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