yet another pkgng vs. ports management question

[illoai at gmail.com]

On 4 April 2014 17:38, David Newman <dnewman at networktest.com> wrote:
> I have recently taken over sysadmin chores for a FreeBSD 9.2 system that
> runs ports installed with some combination of default and non-default
> options.
>
> I don't know which ports have non-default options set. The person who
> set up the system is not available.
>
> For purposes of keeping the system up-to-date, which option is best:
>
> - just run 'pkg update && pkg upgrade'
>
> - just update the ports tree and run 'portmaster -aD'
>
> - some combination of pkg and portmaster
>
> - something else
>

I'm not aware that you can use non-default options with a pure
pkg (i.e. not built from source) system.  Portmaster (which I use)
would seem to be the obvious choice.  Assuming you aren't
building www/chromium on a pentium-iii, upgrades of your
installed ports from source should rarely take more than a couple
of hours.  Also, portmaster can use pre-built packages: see the
-P (& -PP) flags.

If I'm not missing anything vital, those ports with an entry in
/var/db/ports/ should be the ones to look at, as the changes
to any options should be stored there.

The biggest thing is to not fiddle too much with stuff until you
have a better idea of what needs to keep running exactly as it
is, for Lo! there be dragons.

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