is it safe to upgrade ruby18?

[Scott Bennett]

     On Sun, 24 Dec 2006 Parv <parv at pair.com> wrote:
>in message <20061224031147.GF756 at pubbox.net>,
>wrote Armin Arh thusly...
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 23, 2006 at 08:21:22PM -0600, Scott Bennett wrote:
>> >      The portmanager program wants to upgrade ruby18.  Is is safe to
>> > let it?  I made the mistake of trying to do a "portupgrade ruby18" under
>> good question.
>> As ruby is crucial to the portmanager special care should be taken.
>
>Ruby is CRUCIAL for things portupgrade but not portmanager.  For the

     portupgrade (a.k.a. portinstall) is a ruby18 script, so, yes, ruby18
is necessary for that.  I hadn't noticed that portmanager doesn't appear
to need it, so thanks for pointing that out.

>latter a C compiler, make, etc. is needed, which FreeBSD already
>provides.  portmanager OPTIONALLY needs ruby to convert
>pkgtools.conf (portupgrade) to its configuration format (by way of
>running pkgtools-to-portmanager.rb).
>
     Really?  How does it do that?  The string "ruby" doesn't appear in
the portmanager binary anywhere.  Neither does "pkg", "port", "tool", or
"rb".
>
>> Good luck there are almost no dependencies for ruby itself:
>
>Indeed, unlike python or the pig that is gnome.
>
     Okay, but if the make fails somewhere, how do I recover the version
of ruby18 and any associated files that is currently installed?
     Also, does anyone know how to fix the problem I described previously
with python24 and glitz?  It's a pity that the packages-and-ports system
is so fragile, but I'd like to know how to nurse if back to health for
now.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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