Portmaster general questions and problems

[Ron (Lists)]

I had been using portupgrade for several years and never had any 
problems and upgrading ports was quick and simple process every week.  
But, due to portupgrade no longer being maintained and failing to work 
anymore, I have switched to using portmaster and am having nothing but 
problems, so much so that I dread updating my ports.

I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong or what I don't 
understand about portmaster.  I've looked on google and can't find any 
documentation that isn't just basic stuff or rehashes of the man pages 
(which are fine for reference, but not helpful in understanding how to 
use it).

Here is an example of a problem I run into all the time:

I went to update php and I got this:

===>>> Starting check for runtime dependencies
===>>> Gathering dependency list for devel/libltdl from ports
===>>> No dependencies for devel/libltdl
===>  Installing for libltdl-2.2.10
===>   Generating temporary packing list
===>  Checking if devel/libltdl already installed
===>   libltdl-2.2.10 is already installed
      You may wish to ``make deinstall'' and install this port again
      by ``make reinstall'' to upgrade it properly.
      If you really wish to overwrite the old port of devel/libltdl
      without deleting it first, set the variable "FORCE_PKG_REGISTER"
      in your environment or the "make install" command line.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/devel/libltdl.

ok, so libltdl-2.2.10 is already installed?  Why is that an issue?  
Why doesn't portmaster just happily skip it since it's already 
installed?  What am I not understanding here?  Or am I using portmaster 
wrong?

Portmaster also doesn't seem to understand when ports are already 
up-to-date, so doing this:

portmaster php5-*

To update all the php5 ports causes portmaster to re-install things 
that are already up to date.  Is this expected behavior?  if so, how 
can I upgrade ports without typing each one my hand.  I'd rather not 
run portmaster with -a since I don't want to blindly update everything.

Is there a good tutorial on portmaster somewhere that can help an some 
get started with it?  Is portmaster the best tool for updating ports?

Thanks, Ron