Newby Question: What to do when one port can't recognize another port?

[Jeff D]

James,

On 10/30/07, James <jamesh at lanl.gov> wrote:
>
> All OSes have their good and bad points. Sometimes, even the mighty ubuntu
> pushes out broken updates (such as the one a version or two back that broke
> a significant percentage's X-configuration). And ubuntu has a bug tracker
> for a reason, not just for kicks.
>
> Just like FreeBSD.
>
> If you want a smoother sailing way of going forwards, try installing the
> older version of apache that's available in ports. Its install is the one
> that's handbook documented. If you decide to go with ubuntu, I hope it goes
> well for you. They have a friendly community that can help most problems.
>


Thanks for the 'points'.

I certainly get the fact that all OSes have bugs.  That's not my concern.

What's a bit confounding is why/how the "process" allows two very mainstream
& released/stable versions of programs (Apache 22 & Berkeley DB 46) to not
play nice together for so long.  ( Reading the PR reference from above, it's
been at least a solid month, if not longer ...).  It's not liike my
expectation was to get anything but the most popular, widely used, programs
set up.

To a Newby, it seems like a guessing game as to what works and what
doesn't.  Frustrating, if only after an extended 'sales job' on how the
ports system makes such problems go away got me here in the 1st place.

And, yes the Ubuntu crowd has been very responsive -- and I do have a fully
functional server with up to date program version up and running (mostly)
without any of problems of out of date Ports not being dealt with.

That said, I've stumbled on the PF firewall.  After the headache I was
getting trying to learn & configure IPTables, it's seemingly straightforward
to use.  And, if I read correctly, NOT available in the Linux world, only on
OpenBSD & FreeBSD.

So, I've some choices to make.  The PR author replied to an email I sent,
and has given me some options to "workaround" the out of date Apache22 port
instead of downgrading to an earlier/older version of Berkeley DB.  But
that's starting to get me into a system that isn't managed by a
port-management system.  Which is what I was hoping to avoid in the first
place.

All of this would cease to be a problem for me if that port were simply
updated.  But, that seems unlikely anytime soon without some intervention by
someone with the right knowledge & clout.  That's certainly not me.

Regards,

  Jeff