X.org fails after 2.12. upgrade

[Wilde, Donald]

You haven't heard anything back because this is most likely a problem
specific to your server.  There are a few FAQ questions that touch on
common problems starting GNOME at
http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/faq2.html.  Have you gone through all
of those steps to try and figure out what is happening?

I had already tried several sets of portupgrade --all and
gnome_upgrade.sh before writing. The good news is that the complete
wipeout worked.

pkgdb -F
pkg_delete -rf pkgconfig\*
cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome2
make clean
make install clean

The painful part is that it also wiped out everything from emacs to
windowmaker to X.org itself, not just ports identified as 'gnome
applications'. Please update said FAQ to issue a more strident warning
that you won't be able to do any more than use ee from the console
prompt until you manually reinstall darn near everything once you've
been forced to use that alternative.

I do like gnome2. I understand that these things do happen in a fluid
development environment, and that you guys are hopping just to keep up
with it. I am really grateful that you do what you do! 

I think that a few more warnings would be appropriate to let us worker
bees know that we can occasionally expect to be trashed for a few days
at a time while sorting things out. I know such warnings exist for
-CURRENT in the OS itself, and I think it's necessary here as well. 

None of these FAQ steps led me to any understanding of what or where or
why I was trashed. There was nothing to help me 'figure out' anything,
only one that should be labeled:

      Start Global Thermonuclear War? (yes or no)