Why build INDEX ?

[Erik Trulsson]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2003 at 12:42:13PM -0700, Kent Stewart wrote:
> On Sunday 19 October 2003 10:21 am, Erik Trulsson wrote:
> > On Sun, Oct 19, 2003 at 10:09:59AM -0400, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
> > > Adam McLaurin <adam.mclaurin at gmx.net> writes:
> 
> > > That doesn't mean you have to rebuild your own INDEX file, because
> > > you can (and will, unless you specifically refuse it) download it
> > > along with the rest of the ports collection.  Of course, those are
> > > only built every few weeks, so they generally won't be completely
> > > up-to-date either.
> >
> > There is almost never any need to rebuild INDEX.
> > I think sysinstall might use it to get information on available
> > packages, but I am not sure.  Other than that it is not really
> > needed.
> 
> If that was true, why does the man page for portupgrade tell you to do 
> the following 
> 
>    o   To perform upgrades effectively and correctly, remember to run
>         pkgdb(1) with -F on occasions to fix dependency discrepancies,     
>         and run portsdb(1) with -Uu every time you CVSup the ports tree 
>         to keep your ports INDEX database up-to-date in sync with the 
>         tree.

Ask the people who wrote that manpage.
The portupgrade port might use INDEX.  I don't use portupgrade, so I
neither know nor care about what it does.
The utilities in the base system don't need an up-to-date INDEX.


> 
> When I checked the cvsweb.cgi,  I see INDEX is currently 2 weeks old and 
> before INDEX-5 was updated recently, it was 8 weeks old. 

Yes, there are usually several weeks between updates of INDEX.


-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013 at student.uu.se