Free BSD 8.1

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 330, Issue 2, Message: 22
On Tue, 28 Sep 2010 00:02:29 -0700 perryh at pluto.rain.com wrote:
 > Mike Clarke <jmc-freebsd2 at milibyte.co.uk> wrote:
 > > 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 If your ports tree is very much out of date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.
 > 
 > and, in this context, your point is?
 > 
 > I'm advocating starting from a stable and self-consistent baseline,
 > consisting of a release _and_ its corresponding port/package
 > collection, and then considering whether any updates are needed.
 > Isn't that orthogonal to the question of whether or not to follow
 > ports updates, once the baseline has been established?

Makes sense to me.  There's been a ports freeze and extra attention to 
consistency of dependencies leading up to a -RELEASE, so there's a much 
better chance of all your ports working together from the outset, then 
you can update them at leisure while still getting on with some work!

That there's also a self-consistent complete set of packages at that 
point seems lost on some folks having good enough bandwidth and fast 
enough systems to never need bothering with packages.

I agree with Mike about the worms :)  I have an 8.0-RELEASE system with 
many ports installed and quite a few configured to taste with a recently 
upgraded 8-STABLE world, working through a huge portversion update list, 
started by fetching over 900MB of packages so far including X and KDE by 
portupgrade -aFPP.  It's going to take a while, and I'll be surprised if 
I don't skin a few knuckles on circular dependencies along the way.

cheers, Ian