port vs. packages vs. FreeBSD updating (was: FreeBSD Security Survey)

[Matthias Andree]

Scott Long <scottl at samsco.org> writes:

> I share this frustration with you.  I was once told that the pain in
> upgrading is due largely to a somewhat invisible difference between
> installing a pre-compiled package, and building+installing a port.

Well, the last time I saw this as a major issue was when people were
innocently attempting to install packages fetched from packages-6-stable
.tbz with rcNG scripts, that already expected a 6.1 base system
(rcorder(8) migration) on 6\.0-RELEASE(-p.*)? - this failed horribly for
some users with services not being started since the new rcNG script
naming wasn't at the time supported by the base system.

These issues did not ever affect, AFAICS, building ports from source --
however, doing this requires a lot of machine horsepower.

Regardless of the creation of a stable ports branch, I'd URGE to add
"minimum and maximum OSVERSION required" tags to packages to prevent
their being installed on incompatible systems.

-- 
Matthias Andree