I want to upgrade an old (8.3-RC2) FReeBSD installation, but can't install subversion

[Torfinn Ingolfsen]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 5:04 AM, James R. Van Artsdalen <james at jrv.org> wrote:
> Which branch of ports did Torfinn use?

no branch, simply portsnap fetch; portsnap extract.


>
> fetch branch ports/branches/RELEASE_8_4_0/ and see if that works.

Hmm, checking the man page for portsnap - it doesn't look like (to me
at least) it supports getting branches of ports...
So where are the instructions for that operation?

(and thanks to all who replied with instructions on how to fix the
actual problem (getting a make binary, getting a static subersion and
so on) I knew some of them, and learned a few new ones)

The point being; assuming the worst situation; that I was
inexperienced with FreeBSD and only had this one machine with FreeBSD
available, I would expect and want the system to tell me about the
problem in a useful way which would give me breadcrumbs / clues
pointers / to a solution, be it in /usr/ports/UPDATING or otherwise
(but it should be somewhere I would expect it, for POLA reasons).

-- 
mvh
Torfinn