the art of pkgdb -F

[Kevin Kinsey]

Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
> On Mar 27, 2007, at 8:34 PM, Josh Carroll wrote:
> 
>>> Stale dependency: p5-Authen-SASL-2.09 -> p5-GSSAPI-0.24 
>>> (security/p5-GSSAPI):
>>> p5-Geography-Countries-1.4 (score:26%) ? ([y]es/[n]o/[a]ll) [no]
>>
>> Well this one is pretty obvious. Look at what the stale dependency is,
>> and what it's suggesting? :)
> 
> To me it is entirely unclear.  First of all, I don't know what "stale 
> dependency" is supposed to mean.  Second, I don't know what "score" 
> means, and finally, I don't know what the question is that I'm to answer 
> yes, no or all to.

I could attempt, but it's easier to type "See below".
 
> So I've just taken to running with -Fa and hope for the best (and so far 
> everything has worked).
 
This makes you pretty normal, I expect.

> If the answers to these questions are in the man page for pkgdb, I 
> apologize, but I haven't found them there.

Here is a time-honored and rather canonical diatribe on "The Art of 
Pkgdb -F" (a great thread title, BTW).  Note also that it is nearly
six years old, and that additional package-management tools have been
proposed, created, and released to the public, and some may have already
been EOL'ed and buried, but the rest of them aren't considered "standard" 
by any means, and currently the FreeBSD world is in a pseudo-Biblical
"every man did as he saw fit" state these days[1].

   http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2001/11/29/Big_Scary_Daemons.html

Of course, (and here's a rather large can of worms), there weren't {m?}any
alternatives "back in the day", the the tools that are 'officially' documented
became "standard" more or less by default.  (and, come to think of it, are
they at all, if so, where, etc., etc.)

HTH, `cat flames > /dev/null 2>&1`,

Kevin Kinsey

[1] Since the punishment for these transgressions is basically just
a temporal "make deinstall" under /usr/ports followed by 2-4 days of
rebuilding, (more if KDE/GNOME is installed, but not much as opposed 
to eternal flame/torment), I suppose it's OK to let everybody fend 
for themselves with whatever tool they like best. One thing you'll 
notice about the BSDs is that since they are "traditional" Unix-like 
systems, a lot of folks stick to "traditions" pretty closely.
-- 
You need no longer worry about the future.
This time tomorrow you'll be dead.