portupgrade vs. portmaster

[Jonathan Chen]

On 30 April 2018 at 22:33, Thomas Mueller <mueller6722 at twc.com> wrote:
[...]
> I see hardly any mention of synth on the freebsd-ports list.  Have synth users become disenchanted?

There are a growing number of synth users. They just don't appear on
the list 'cause the software just works.

> One downside is that synth fails to install build dependencies, so I have to pkg install all of these separately, very annoying.

Why should build dependencies be installed? Their only purpose is for
building the port.

> I was bitten just yesterday trying to build cross-compiling tools for Haiku when make info was missing because texinfo was built but not installed.
>
> But I was able to recover with pkg install after checking my repository.
>
> With portmaster, I need to specify ports by category/portname rather than just portname, for example
> portmaster www/seamonkey
>
> On my other computer, with MSI Z77 MPOWER motherboard, synth just fumbles and crashes.

I would suspect you have hardware issues instead. synth builds tend to
strain the machine - it's a good test of machine hardiness.

Cheers.
-- 
Jonathan Chen <jonc at chen.org.nz>