Totally lost

[Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P.]

Mário Gamito wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Well, actuallly, after i make a port upgrade with cvsup, i go
> to /usr/ports (there's) a Makefile there, and do a "make install".


I am not sure that you want to do this under what I consider "normal"
circumstances.  There is a target there for "updating" the tree via
CVS if I'm reading it right, and a useful one for "fetchindex".  Most
users probably don't want to "make install" the whole tree, and I'm
not sure by reading the Makefile that you can, anyway.  Maybe
someone else can shed some light on that issue.

> That Makefile enters an endless loop asking for libtool 1.8 (i think
> this is the version), that it's not in the ports.
>
> BTW, what's the difference in using cvsup or portupdate to update the 
> ports ?


Do you mean "portupgrade"?  (Or is "portupdate" the binary C. Percival
type thing?)

CVSup and CVS do similar things, but portupgrade is quite different.
Keep in mind that the ports tree itself is simply a large directory tree
of port "skeletons", that is, Makefiles and patches that allow the system
to automagically fetch, unzip, configure, compile, and install (and clean
up after) software.  Using CVSup (or CVS, or CTM, etc.) you simply grab
the latest copies of the tree from the online repository.

Portupgrade, on the other hand, checks your package database to
see what's installed on your system and compares the version
numbers to those in the (usually newly cvsupped) ports tree.  It
then does all the "fetch-unzip-configure-compile-clean" stuff for you,
without you ever having to type much (if you do it right) and will,
if desired, do the same thing recursively for all dependencies, etc.

(I can only assume that if there's such a thing as 'portupdate', [and it
does seem like it's coming if not already here] that it does a similar
thing, only using precompiled binaries.)

> This is so confusing, and i already read a lot about it.
> Mybe i'm simply dumb, but i'm a Linux system's administrator
> for years (i remember walking with Slackware in a pack of floppies, 
> LOL :) )


Heh, you can still fit PicoBSD on one ... ;-)

> Regards.
> Mário Gamito 


HTH,

Kevin Kinsey