New user confused by need to do huge upgrade

[Michael C. Shultz]

On Monday 07 November 2005 15:49, Alistair wrote:
> Hello, All
>
> I am a user of Linux for many years (and an aged BSD sysadmin from
> 1985-1989), but laterly mainly use Gentoo.  FreeBSD seemed to be a good
> alternative, so I get the 6.0 release a few days after it was released.
>
> Being a Gentoo person, I like the ports system, but with limited time on
> my hands, I also like the compiled packages.  I can get a working system
> from packages then compile my own ports as need or want be.  Or so I
> thought.
>
> I installed from two CDs, and got a working KDE system.  Now, I want to
> do Firefox from ports with my own make.conf for P4 optimisation.  Good!
>   So, I sync with the sources using cvsup (just like emerge --sync)
> change to the Firefox ports directory, type "make" and enter dependency
> hell like has never been known before.  Everything that depends upon
> GTK2 must be updated before Firefox can be compiled!

If you don't want to do an entire upgrade of gnome2 or KDE but just
get Firefox right install sysutils/portmanager (version 0.3.2 is in ports 
right now)

then run 

portmanager www/firefox

It will upgrade the dependencies that just pertain to firefox first
then either upgrade firefox or install it if you don't have it yet.

When version 0.3.3 of portmanager gets into the ports tree 
(pr is submitted) you can do the entire kde/gnome upgrade with just

portmanager -u


-Mike
>
> I thought that FreeBSD would be more stable than Gentoo and Linux
> distros in general.  I now find that there is the most major release
> step (5.4 to 6.0) and within a matter of a few days later, both Gnome
> and KDE are subject to huge updates that require many hours (or maybe
> days - it's not done yet) of CPU time.


>
> Maybe I am missing something.  However, I just cannot see why this is
> right. What I thought that FreeBSD would give me that Gentoo did not is
> a coherent system within which deveopment was co-ordinated. Instead, I
> seem to find the opposite.  The core group can offer a major release of
> the OS, while missing the fact that two hugely important development
> groups are just days off their own major releases.
>
> Maybe there is a level of sanity I am missing as a newcomer to BSD, but
> I would really like someone to tell me where to find it so that I can
> stop having to use this bloody Windows laptop to post here ;-)
>
> Regards
> A
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