Returning with question about SELECTIVELY updating ports tree

[Mark Terribile]

Olli Hauer,

I tried to reply to you directly as ohauer at FreeBSD.org and received the following error.   My message (edited a bit) follows the error.



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---  <ohauer at gmx.de>: host mx1.gmx.net[213.165.64.102] said: 550-5.7.1 {mx113} The
---      recipient does not accept mails from 'yahoo.com' over foreign mailservers
---      550 5.7.1 ( http://portal.gmx.net/serverrules ) (in reply to RCPT TO
---      command)
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Olli,

> > If there is a way to do this with portsnap, please
> tell me how.  I've tried the -I option but it seems to
> want me to do the extract which (according to the man page)
> will wipe out the whole tree.

> Protect your ports tree
> $> cd /usr/
> $> mv ports ports_save && mkdir ports &&
> portsnap extract
>
>
> This way you have your old and a fresh ports tree
> available.
> Portsnap checks the file ports/.portsnap.INDEX to see
> which
> ports have updates without this file portsnap extracts the
> whole tree.
>
> Now you can check with diff what has changed in your
> needed
> ports. In most of the cases you can merge the ports in the
> saved tree to newer versions.

When you do that, don't you mess up the "install/uninstall" data?  The new port may not know how to uninstall the old one correctly, or even understand that the old one is installed.

Or am I missing something?  I went through something like this a while ago, with a massive set of uncontrolled rebuilds.  My shared libraries and executables were bolixed and after two days of trying to get X (and X apps and other things) running again I gave up and reloaded from backup.

I don't want to go that route again.

Here's my point of confusion:

My understanding is that portupgrade understands how to rebuild ports and manage their dependencies.  It's not perfect, but it's far more right than wrong.  And the key to portupgrade is whatever ports-available/dependent list it uses.  So shouldn't The Right Thing To Do be to fetch and install just the upgrade to that list?

But smashing everything blindly (which portsnap extract would seem to do) not only does an end run around portupgrade, it completely thwarts it.

Doesn't it?

    Mark