Gnome / xorg / Ports / Release related nightmares

[Kris Kennaway]

On Wed, Apr 13, 2005 at 02:29:38AM +0100, freebsd at drseuk.f2s.com wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> At the risk of being accused of being "a troll in the bikeshed", here goes:
> 
> I've used FreeBSD since 2.2.6 (c. 1998) and I love it. Never lost any data and I
> trust it, thanks to all the hard work all the developers are doing!
> 
> Recently, I went through the 4.3 -> 5.3 / XFree -> xorg / Gnome 2.4 -> 2.10
> upgrade cycle somewhat ambitiously in one go.
> 
> Currently I'm tracking 5.3 Release (though of course I'm aware that 5.4 is
> imminent).
> 
> I need to use ports (1200+ of them on average in fact), yet they are only
> supported for STABLE, yet the blind use of STABLE is not recommended.

and the most recent release on the -stable branch(es).  See
http://www.freebsd.org/ports.

> Basically I'm asking for advice on how best to install / manage ports with
> stability in mind. I'm guilty of mixing "pkg_add -vr" (Release based) with
> "make install" (Current ports tree based) and "portupgrade" (which AFAIK kind
> of mixes the previous two options) as well as resorting to the occasional "ln
> -s" after a bit of "ldd'ing" (which is probably not advisable long term but
> helps if you need a quick library link on a slow machine!).

As you suspect, this can damage the ability of your system to run
ported applications.  Don't do it unless you're prepared to track down
and repair the damage when it happens (it sounds like you're not).

Kris
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