FreeBSD 9 & recompile ports

[Kevin Oberman]

On Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 12:46 AM, Matthew Seaman <
m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk> wrote:

> On 13/01/2012 22:57, Andriy Gapon wrote:
> > But if the appropriate misc/compatX port is installed, then those
> libraries do
> > actually exist and the system should be fully usable... Modulo the compat
> > libraries not working with the new kernel as Kostik has pointed out.
>
> As soon as you update or install an application after this point, you
> are likely to end up with an application that tries to dynamically link
> two different versions of the same shlib, and that is a recipe for
> tears-before-bedtime.
>
>
I don't recall any "tears", but it does become a real pain. The compat
ports only work for those who only update when absolutely required. Thanks
to symbol versioning, most base system libraries don't cause a problem, so
the problem is far less likely to bite you than it was in the past, but the
bottom line is that you should seriously consider updating all ports.

Thanks to Doug Barton's work on portmaster(8), doing so with packages is
pretty fast and easy. Even doing a full re-build of all ports (over 1000 of
them) on the last system I upgraded to 9.0  updated with no intervention
over one night. Use the multiple steps in the big example in the
portmaster(8) man page for best results and run the re-install step with
'-D'. The man page also provides a simple way to do the job, but it does
not assure a completely clean system. I would also consider saving the
files in /usr/local/etc after all ports have been removed.That can save a
fair amount of reconfiguration at the slight risk of retaining some old
cruft.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
E-mail: kob6558 at gmail.com