Free BSD 8.1

Mike Clarke jmc-freebsd2 at milibyte.co.uk
Mon Sep 27 09:16:31 UTC 2010


On Monday 27 September 2010, perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:

> I've recently started on a new system, and am planning to install
> 8.1-RELEASE, including the corresponding ports tree; then install
> what ports I can from packages and also fetch the corresponding
> distfiles; and finally build -- from release-corresponding ports --
> any that aren't available as packages or where I want non-default
> OPTION settings.  That approach should avoid most nasty surprises
> while getting things set up and working.  _After_ everything is
> installed and configured properly will be plenty soon enough to
> consider whether any ports need to be updated -- and the already-
> installed-and-working package collection will provide a fallback
> in case of trouble trying to build any updated versions.

The problem is if/when you need to update a port as a result of a 
security advisory. If your ports tree is very much out of date then 
it's likely that updating that one port will require a number of 
dependencies to be updated as well, sometimes all the ports depending 
on one or more of the updated dependencies need to be updated as well 
and the resultant bag of worms can take quite a lot of sorting out. 
The "little and often" approach of keeping the ports tree up to date 
could be less traumatic.

-- 
Mike Clarke


More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list