Re: pkg upgrade yields conflicts in message

On 7/17/26 22:29, Mike wrote:
> 
> OK, I had been critical of the "conflicts" presented in pkgs.
> 
> Today, I performed an update,
> Many, many! gcc updates downloaded and installed.
> 
> And, after the update, lo and behold ...
> 
> No conflicts noted!
> 
> .....
> 
> # pkg-do-upgrades.sh
> Updating FreeBSD-ports repository catalogue...
> FreeBSD-ports repository is up to date.
> Updating FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository catalogue...
> FreeBSD-ports-kmods repository is up to date.
> Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
> FreeBSD repository is up to date.
> All repositories are up to date.
> Checking for upgrades (0 candidates): 100%
> Processing candidates (0 candidates): 100%
> Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
> Your packages are up to date.
> 
> .....
> 
> 
> Of course, there still remains the questions for me...
> 
> Why do I need to download and install all of ...
> 
> gcc12-12.4.0_5                 GNU Compiler Collection 12
> gcc13-devel-13.4.1.s20260624   GNU Compiler Collection 13
> gcc14-devel-14.3.1.s20260618,1 GNU Compiler Collection 14
> gcc15-15.2.0_3                 GNU Compiler Collection 15
> gcc16-devel-16.1.1.s20260627   GNU Compiler Collection 16
> gcc17-devel-17.0.0.s20260621   GNU Compiler Collection 17
> 
> 
> on the server?
> 
> Six different versions of gcc??
> 
> I mean really, can't FreeBSD get its collective act together and move
> towards one or two, even three versions of gcc?

No set of FreeBSD Volunteers have agreed to do such a thing for you. Are
you volunteering to work on the problem? (It does not sound like it.)

There are 6 lang/gcc*-devel that are test builds of upcoming updates (or
first release) to the matching non-devel variant. So the total is more
like 11 port-packages, as stands.

It is also the case that 1 or 2 of the non-devel ones are gcc* releases
that provide a context for working on updating port-packages to use them.

As for the non-devel ones otherwise (gcc12 . . . gcc16):

There are 35000+ FreeBSD port packages, some fraction of which are
directly based on using a lang/gcc* and some which may be dependent on
those but do not use a lang/gcc* directly. The port packages are not
based on native FreeBSD source code but on upstream projects, some of
which make little effort to support FreeBSD and some of which support a
range of OS's that do not agree on what vintage(s) of gcc* to have
around. FreeBSD does not have the resources to update all those upstream
projects. Those upstream projects are not all time/gcc-version synchronized.

It takes a notable time for most all of the lang/gcc* port-packages to
be ready for the next default lang/gcc* . Each does not generally start
to update until sometime after its next lang/gcc* is available in the
ports tree.

The devel/electron*'s have the same sort of issue, but a comparatively
tiny number of port-packages dependent on them --but some of those may
be heavily used. There are 7 different devel/electron* , 6 of which are
commonly blacklisted because it is so resource intensive to build the
whole set of them.

There is a list of lang/llvm* as well. There are other examples of such
for toolchains.

Why your context ends up with lang/gcc*-devel usage, I have no idea.

A command like:

# pkg query -g '%o : %#r' lang/gcc\*-devel

should report how many port packages are directly dependent on
lang/gcc\*-devel port packages (in your environment).

# pkg query -g '%o : %rn-%rv' lang/gcc\*-devel

should provide port-package names.

Another way is to do a pkg delete of such a port-package to see what it
reports would be deleted.

> 
> But six?

11 as stands.

> 
> Wow.

Having probably hundreds of port-packages dependent on one a lang/gcc*
leads to non-trivial efforts being involved in progressing over time.


-- 
===
Mark Millard
marklmi at yahoo.com