Forcing port reinstalls without rebuilding over and over again

[Polytropon]

On Wed, 12 Dec 2018 14:42:00 -0700, Gary Aitken wrote:
> On 12/12/18 1:47 PM, Polytropon wrote:
> 
> > In my opinion, it's a little better to create your own
> > "top ports list" instead of saving the current state (or
> > at least have both lists at hand, but only use your own).
> > In that "top ports list", you list the things you actually
> > want to use, and you do not care about their depencencies,
> > simply because portmaster can resolve them on its own. So
> > first, your list is much more readable (as it will only
> > contain the software you are interested in, and nothing
> > of the software you might need to build or run them), and
> > second, your list will be much more portable and also deal
> > with the "port not needed, but still installed" problem
> > described above.
> 
> That is the way I've done it in the past, using -R -d, and doing so
> does not rebuild dependencies.  I suspect the problem has something
> to do with -a.

Yes, I think this is correct. The list of all (!) installed
ports, in combination with -a, will result into rebuilding
everything, no matter if it is still needed (as a dependency);
it implicitely "promotes" all items in the generated list to
a "top port" (to stay with the naming mentioned above), as
there is no real distinction between "is a top port" and "is
just a dependency for something more important".

As I said, it doesn't matter in most cases, but on the other
hand, would you want to have something installed that you are
not going to use at all? ;-)



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...