Is it O.K. to use the 7.0 ports tree on 6.3 ?

[Ian Smith]

On Fri, 23 Nov 2007, Doug Barton wrote:
 > Pete French wrote:
 > > I have a set of machines running 7.0 and a set running 6.3 which I
 > > would like to use the same ports on. I was under the impression that
 > > there was only one ports tree, so is it safe to simply untar the
 > > ports.tgz file from 7.0 on the 6.3 machines, rename INDEX-7 to INDEX-6
 > > and install away, or are there more subtle differences to tran the unwary ?
 > 
 > You've already received the right advice about not renaming the INDEX,
 > but I think it's also worth mentioning that untar'ing a static picture
 > of the ports tree is of little practical value unless you never plan
 > to update the base, and you never plan to update any ports on that
 > machine.
 > 
 > You're much better off starting with downloading the tree with csup,
 > that way you can maintain it more easily down the road.

Or you can just use 'portsnap fetch extract' and then for updates use
'portsnap fetch update'.  This maintains the INDEX files according to
your base system also; you don't need to use make fetchindex.

Cheers, Ian