FreeBSD Upgrade: Ports That Need Rebuilding

[Mel Flynn]

On Thursday 16 April 2009 07:15:05 Roland Smith wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 12:49:43AM +0400, Eugene L. wrote:
> > I am planning to update to CURRENT, been reading freebsd-current for
> > some time, apparently some ports require rebuilding as they are kernel
> > specific, like hal, so I wonder how to rebuild those ports automatically?
>
> If you switch to another major version of FreeBSD, the best course is to
> remove and reinstall all ports.

All ports depending on libc. Which is everything except scripts. Removal isn't 
necessary. ports-mgmt/portmaster is one of those scripts that doesn't need 
recompilation and can be used to force recompilation of all ports that need 
it. Two for one deal.

I personally do make delete-old-libs /before/ recompiling ports this way, 
because 1) I'm sure a port doesn't link to an old library and 2) the ports 
that failed will complain more loudly.

However, when you're doing this for the first time, it's not a bad idea to 
make a seperate slice for current and cross-install on there (the procedure is 
documented in /usr/src/UPDATING). It's trivial to look at the stable slice's 
/var/db/pkg and install all those ports, then copy over configuration files. 
/home can be share without problems, providing you create the users again with 
the same uid. The advantage is that you have a workable system to fall back on 
whenever -current breaks something you need.
-- 
Mel