greetings from FreeBSD DLL Hell!

[N.J. Thomas]

* Bob Johnson <bob89 at bobj.org> [2005-03-23 22:00:58 -0500]:
> On Wednesday 23 March 2005 08:16 pm, N.J. Thomas wrote:
> > "pkg_add -r foo". This worked, but it went and downloaded older
> > versions of various programs (i.e. Mozilla Firefox 0.9).
>
> By default, pkg_add uses the packages that were built for your release
> (so everything is consistent).  As a result, when your release gets to
> be a few months old, so do the packages.

Thanks for the tip. I wasn't aware that pkg_add -r was more or less tied
strictly to the release version. I followed your advice and deleted all
the older packages, installed portupgrade, updated the ports tree, and
reinstalled everything I needed.

Things seem to be okay now.

> > I installed some packages with pkg_add -r (which used the
> > 5.3-RELEASE versions of the software), and then installed some other
> > stuff with ports, and then updated ports with cvsup and then
> > installed yet some more stuff, and now I seem to find myself in the
> > FreeBSD equivalent of "DLL Hell".
>
> What do you mean when you say you are in DLL hell?  Is something
> actually not working right?  FreeBSD is pretty good about managing
> libraries.

Well, the specific problem I had was that after doign a fresh install, I
installed some packages with pkg_add. Then I updated ports, and
installed some more stuff. And then when I went back to use pkg_add, it
complained about some program need library v1.4 but v1.6 was installed
on the system (because it had been installed by ports).

thanks,
Thomas

-- 
N.J. Thomas
njt at ayvali.org
Etiamsi occiderit me, in ipso sperabo