upgrading all ports

[Erik Nørgaard]

Alex Zbyslaw wrote:
> Erik Nørgaard wrote:
>> portupgrade isn't suitable for upgrading the entire machine, even 
>> though you do recursive and Recursive.
> 
> What, in your opinion, makes it unsuitable?  I've used portugrade 
> exclusively and never had trouble.

Unsuitable if

- it is slower than the altertative to deinstall all ports and
   reinstall.
- thinks break

I don't claim it won't work, I don't claim that things will break, but 
they may depending on what is being upgraded which was not mentioned in OP.

The problem is that the double (up and down) recursive resolution of 
interdependencies quickly becomes very complex with the result that some 
ports may be updated multiple times, or that portupgrade will choke 
trying to figure out where to start.

It then quickly becomes much faster to simply deinstall all ports and 
reinstall. It also lets you clean up any junk that may have been left 
for whatever reasons.

And, then there are the general warnings about upgrading Gnome (not 
minor minor upgrades) eg 2.8 to 2.10, upgrading perl and friends, module 
paths etc. These are things that can ofcourse be resolved, I just found 
it easier to clean up the whole thing and reinstall it, see 
/usr/ports/UPDATING - there are numerous warnings on portupgrade.

For single/few apps upgrade portupgrade is fine, or if the system is 
mostly up to date so a full upgrade will only affect a few packages.

I have had my system serverely down after using portupgrade because of 
problems with dependencies on X11.

OP did not mention how old the system to be upgraded is. So in the 
particular case it is dificult to say. But I assume that if he wants to 
upgrade his _entire_ system then I can assume significant updates to be 
done.

Erik
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