portupgrade vs. portmanager

[RW]

On Friday 24 December 2004 07:38, Michael C. Shultz wrote:
> On Thursday 23 December 2004 11:16 pm, Jay O'Brien wrote:
> > Michael C. Shultz wrote:
> > > On Thursday 23 December 2004 10:01 pm, Jay O'Brien wrote:
> > >>I'm running 5.3 RELEASE and trying to learn. I did a ports cvsup.
> > >>Following the Dru Lavigne article on portupgrade at
> > >>http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/08/28/FreeBSD_Basics.html?page
> > >>=1 I installed portupgrade and then ran portsdb -Uu. It errored
> > >> out, telling me that I shouldn't use my "refuse" file that stopped
> > >> the non- english docs and ports from being loaded on my HD.
> > >>
> > >>In trying to understand this issue, I found portmanager, and it
> > >> looks like it would perform the same function as portupgrade.
> > >>
> > >>My questions: Is there a way around the "refuse" file prohibition,
> > >>perhaps with portmanager? Does portmanager replace portupgrade?
> > >
> > > portmanager doesn't require the INDEX files to keep ports up to
> > > date, so the refuse file is a non issue with it.
> > >
> > > -Mike
> >
> > Sounds good. What's the downside, if any, to using portmanager
> > instead of portupgrade?
>
> All of your ports will be built with the correct dependencies, they will
> work better leaving you less to complain about in the mail lists and so
> you will become bored.  Because everything is working exactly as it
> should you may begin to think you are a Maytag repair man, nothing much
> to do, just always setting around waiting for something to break.....

I don't use portmanager myself, but isn't it the case that portmanager 
rebuilds not just ports that have newer versions in the ports tree, but also 
all ports that recursively depend on those ports.  

I just updated kdehier with portupgrade in about a minute. The whole of KDE 
depends on kdehier, so presumably portmanager would have taken several days, 
and kdehier isn't particularly unusual. I would see that as a major downside.

When it's necessary UPDATING will suggest running portupgrade  -rf to force 
rebuilding. That kind of UPDATING entry is in a small minority, which 
suggests to me that most of the problems with ports don't stem from the 
sequence of their updating, so I can't see how portmanager is any kind of 
magic-bullet.