package upgrade problems

[Alistar Erlas]

Lately I have been having a lot of trouble installing
packages from the FreeBSD packages-6-stable packages
collection. Often it ends with error messages like
this:

 portupgrade -PP -R -N inkscape

....

--->  Skipping 'x11-toolkits/libgnomeprintui'
(libgnomeprintui-2.10.2) because a requisite package
'libgnomecanvas-2.12.0' (graphics/libgnomecanvas)
failed (specify -k to force)
--->  Skipping 'textproc/gtkspell2'
(gtkspell2-2.0.10_1) because a requisite package
'gtk-2.8.9' (x11-toolkits/gtk20) failed (specify -k to
force)
--->  Skipping 'graphics/inkscape' because a requisite
port 'devel/gconf2' failed (specify -k to force)
** Listing the failed packages (*:skipped / !:failed)
        ! x11-toolkits/gtk20 (gtk-2.8.9)       
(package not found)
        * devel/gconf2 (gconf2-2.12.1)
        * devel/gnomevfs2 (gnomevfs2-2.12.2)
        * misc/gnome-icon-theme
(gnome-icon-theme-2.12.1_2)
        * devel/libglade2 (libglade2-2.5.1_3)
        ! print/libgnomeprint (libgnomeprint-2.10.3_1)
 (package not found)
        * graphics/libgnomecanvas
(libgnomecanvas-2.12.0)
        * x11-toolkits/libgnomeprintui
(libgnomeprintui-2.10.2)
        * textproc/gtkspell2 (gtkspell2-2.0.10_1)
        * graphics/inkscape
--->  Packages processed: 0 done, 54 ignored, 8
skipped and 2 failed

Apparently, some of the packages that inkscape depends
on have not been built yet, or, these dependancy
packages have been deleted and replaced with new
versions, but inkscape has not been rebuilt yet to use
them and requires the old versions still.

I have a brilliant solution to this problem. Why not
simply rebuild all prerequisite packages before
rebuilding the package that depends on them? Also,
when building a new version of a library package for
instance, in addition to placing the new version on
ftp, also leave the old version there, if the old
version is still being used by a another package that
has not been rebuilt yet to use the new version. This
would prevent new packages from being installed and
replacing older packages until all dependancies have
been built, and would also make sure that when a
dependancy is rebuilt, the old version of the
dependancy remians as well for any packages that have
not been rebuilt yet to use the new version of the
dependancy. This means that multiple versions of the
same dependancy would be present in the FTP directory,
until the old version is no longer need by any other
packages. 

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com