Newbie question - package versions in FreeBSD 5.1

[Felix 'buebo' Kakrow]

Darren Phillips schrieb:

> Sorry for the dumb-sounding question - is having multiple package versions installed in 5.1 going to burn me ?
> 
> I (think I) understand the install process but not the consequences. How do all the versions coexist ?
> eg. install another linux base package.
> 

Normally coexistence of new and old versions is not the way to go, and 
pkg_add or 'make install' in the port-directory will refuse to work.
If you want to upgrade 'make deinstall && make reinstall' or pkg_delete 
and pkg_install (with the new version) should be the way to go.
For a more comfortable way you should have a look into portupgrade, wich 
can upgrade all you outdated ports via the ports-system or packages.
I never tried this with FreeBSD, but from my linux-experiments I can 
tell that having multible Versions of the same Programm is usually going 
to give you trouble if you've not been really carefully in terms of 
install and libary Paths. It's even more trouble to do this with libarys.

> Many thanks
> 
> DP

Cheers
Felix