non-destructive ports/packages update

Perry Hutchison perryh at pluto.rain.com
Mon Apr 22 07:30:41 UTC 2013


Peter Pentchev <roam at ringlet.net> wrote:

> Some ports might store "run state" in /var/db/<portname> or a similarly
> named directory.  The thing is, the decision whether to save this and
> restore it or to keep it across runs actually depends on the port: for
> database management systems such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc, you'll
> probably want to keep the databases even if the ports themselves are
> reinstalled, rolled back, restored, whatever.  For some other systems,
> you might want to remove the "current state" information of the version
> that you are about to replace.

Good catch.  No DBMS on this system, so no problem there, but there
are two non-empty X11-related directories under /var/db:  dbus and
fontconfig.  (The machine does have some X client apps, but not the
X server.)


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