Unable to upgrade packages on FreeBSD

[Bas Smeelen]

On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:52:07 -0500
David Jackson <djackson452 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have tried endlessly to no avail to upgrade binary the packages on
> Freebsd to the latest version. I have tried:
> 
> *portupgrade -PP -a
> *portmaster -PP -a
> *pkg_update
> 
> All fail miserably and totally and have left the system in an
> unuseable state.

What's unusable? For instance, servers are perfectly usable without
graphical tools. If you have tried `endlessly` why didn't you
consult /usr/ports/UPDATING and just recompile the ports without
using binary packages?
Or you might want to try PCBSD, it's FreeBSD with some fancy stuff
taken care of which might solve the problem you complain about. 
> 
> Why can't FreeBSD just make the package system "just work". Right
> after installing FreeBSD I should be able to type a single command
> such as update_packages and it should update all packages on the
> system, with no errors and without requiring any configurations to be
> troubleshooted, it should work out of the box.
> 
> Why not? Why is something so simple so difficult and impossible?
> Ubuntu can do it, why not FreeBSD?

FreeBSD unlike Ubuntu is an entirely volunteer project. Ubuntu has
a dedicated corporation working on it and I guess a larger user base.
> 
> Why cant FreeBSD  Just make the package upgrades work.

Because uh well it's not up to FreeBSD since the ports work perfectly
with the documentation that comes with it or it might depend on the user
base also, but _you_ can help to make binary package upgrades work
better.


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