pkgupgrade

[Jeremie Le Hen]

Dear Michel,

On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 01:59:25PM +0100, Michel Talon wrote:
> this is to announce version 1.2 of pkgupgrade, a python tool aimed at
> upgrading freebsd ports installations mainly using binary packages.
> It has a companion program pkg_save.py by Cyrille Szymanski which
> performs backups prior to upgrades, which has been upgraded to version
> 0.7 and a small documentation. You can find them at:
> http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~talon/pkgupgrade
> http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~talon/pkg-save.py
> http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~talon/README.pkgupgrade
> The main difference with previous version:
> - for homogeneity, Cyrille likes to call his program pkg_save.py, so i
>   have changed the name accordingly in pkgupgrade. This requires
> changing the name in /usr/local/sbin.
> - there is a flag "pkg_release" such that, if True, it works as before,
>   but if False, pkgupgrade will use the Latest packages from pointyhat.
> - There is a list COMPILE where you can put ports you insist of
>   compiling, instead of using binary packages. This is to cope with the
> problem of people having special flags in /etc/make.conf for programs
> they use a lot.
> - When running UpgradeShell, if some postinstall scripts answer
>   questions, they will not be screened out.
> 
> There are some user unfriendliness, for example you have to edit the
> begnning of the script to modify its behavior, you need to put correct
> origins in the lists HOLD and COMPILE, no globbing has been implemented
> here, but otherwise the program has been tested on several machines and
> by several people, and it works. You can expect rather important time
> gains with respect to using portupgrade -aP to do the same job, and most
> importantly, you will know beforehand exactly what will be removed and
> upgraded or compiled, before changing anything on disk.
> 
> The programs above are under BSD licence, and anyone is welcome to do
> anything he wants with them, including modifying, improving, rewriting
> in C++, whatever. Personnally i have no intention to change them in the
> short term. Perhaps rewrite in C++ later on, if nobody does, and if it
> appears useful. 

Thank you for your work.  I know that writting a manual page is not
the most exciting task in a project.

However, I strongly recommend you to write at least a small one and
wrap the whole bunch into a port.  People will likely be more willing
to test it and you will get more feedback, including bug reports and
enhancements.

Best regards,
-- 
Jeremie Le Hen
< jeremie at le-hen dot org >< ttz at chchile dot org >