Keeping Ports synchronised with Packages

[Richard Bradley]

On Thursday 22 April 2004 3:25 pm, Andrew L. Gould wrote:
> On Thursday 22 April 2004 08:57 am, Richard Bradley wrote:
> >
...
> > I want to keep my programs up to date, and I want to use precompiled
> > versions as much as possible because it can take hours to compile a large
> > program.
...
> > If I use `portupgrade -PP` (i.e. forcing it to use packages) it (almost)
> > always fails because there are never precompiled packages of the same
> > version as my (cvsup'ed) ports tree.
> >
> > In the same way, `portupgrade -P` (i.e. try to use packages) is
> > equivalent to `portupgrade` (i.e. compile from source) because of the
> > version lag in the packages as compared to the ports.
> >
...
>
> Portupgrade uses the package database of installed applications, which (to
> my knowledge) doesn't care/know whether the package was installed from a
> binary or from the port system.  This assumes that the binary package
> registered the application with the package database.  If you're using
> third-party, binary packages that do not register themselves with the
> package database, keeping applications in sync will probably become a
> manual process.

Yep.

> 'portupgrade -arRP' will upgrade all of the installed packages where it can
> find a binary package or the related port, with a preference for binary
> packages.  If it completes successfully, your packages (binary and port)
> should be in sync.  As long as you don't update your ports tree, it should
> be easy to keep them in sync.  Yes, this can take a long time.  To shorten
> the process, I pkg_delete Open Office and few other huge packages prior to
> portupgrade.  I then manually install the newer binaries after everything
> else has been upgraded.

If I don't update the ports tree, won't portupgrade look for the old versions 
of programs? Without updating the ports, portupgrade won't have anything to 
do, as all my programs would appear to be the current version. Wouldn't they?

> Also, if you recompile the system and kernel, your entire system will be in
> sync!

That would take _days_! Perhaps this is ok for a server, but I am trying to 
use FreeBSD as a desktop system here. It's taking me all afternoon to 
re-install eclipse (you have to compile java) as things stand.


Rich