make delete-old && make delete-old-libs

[Matthew Seaman]

mikel king wrote:
> I had a system that was royally borked after upgrading and completing 
> these steps a few years ago. Ever since I have always skipped these 
> steps. Has anyone else experienced any issues with these two steps?

make delete-old-libs can cause you much wailing and gnashing of teeth
if you do it too soon, but usually only when you're doing a major version
upgrade.  In those circumstances, unless you're careful, all or large
parts of your software installed from ports will cease to work.  Delete
the old libraries only once you've finished reinstalling all of your ported software. Major version upgrades are one of the few times when there will
be old shlibs to consider deleting, so this is a rare event.

make delete-old can theoretically cause you grief if you overwrite bits
of the base system from ports and set corresponding WITHOUT_FOO flags in
/etc/src.conf.  On the whole, having ports overwrite base is something to
be avoided unless you have very good reason to do it.

Whether this will sting you or not is an interesting question: it depends
on developers adding files and directories to the list of old items 
conditionally on defining WITHOUT_FOO type flags in /etc/src.conf.  While
this has the intuitively attractive behaviour that doing a buildworld cycle removes the unwanted programs or libraries, unfortunately it doesn't stop
there.  It will remove your carefully installed ported software the following
time you do a buildworld cycle.  For this reason, settings in src.conf 
do not generally affect the list of old files and directories nowadays.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                   7 Priory Courtyard
                                                  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey     Ramsgate
                                                  Kent, CT11 9PW

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