Portmanager Status Report Gone

[Daniel Staal]

--As of January 15, 2012 10:33:32 AM -0500, Jerry is alleged to have said:

> Exactly how are you invoking "portmanager"? Usually, just give it it the
> "-s" flag will get you a list of port and there status as you probably
> know.

Yep.  I have that in a weekly cron command, so I know what's out of date. 
;)

Basically, any way I invoke portmanager is showing the problem: If I invoke 
with -s, the status doesn't show.  If I invoke with -u, it doesn't upgrade 
anything.  Either way the result is the same: It gathers all the data on 
the ports (at least to 00001), and then prints the header for the next 
section and quits, without actually doing anything.

> If you just want to update everything before updating FreeBSD itself, I
> would suggest running it as: "portmanager -u -l -p -y" Obviously,
> update your ports tree prior to running that command. At the very
> least, you will end up with a log file telling you what failed to
> update properly.

The problem is that it's not *getting* to the updating, somehow.  It 
gathers all the info on what it needs to know for the updating, and then 
stops.  No error message, no output, no log, just stop.  Running that 
command (or any other) doesn't result in portmanager actually *doing* 
anything.

Here is the last four lines of output of a `portmanager -u -l`:

> 00001 sane-backends-1.0.22 /graphics/sane-backends
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Port Status Report
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------

The log noted two broken ports (geany-plugins, both times).  No other 
output.

> I use portmanager myself because it "just works" when other port
> management tools fail.

This has been my experience as well.  ;)  The one thing I don't like about 
it is that it tends to need someone to watch it: If a port has changed it's 
config options, or added a new dependency that I haven't configured before, 
it will pull up the config screen and wait for input.  I'd heard some of 
the other port management tools went and did that all at the beginning, 
which would mean I wouldn't have to sit and watch the screen as much. 
Unfortunatly, they appear to have more annoying behaviors.  (portmaster 
tended to die on the smallest problem, where portmanager would have just 
logged a failure and gone on.)

I'm mostly happy with portmanager.  I just want it *back.*

Daniel T. Staal

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