Is it O.K. to use the 7.0 ports tree on 6.3 ?

[Roland Smith]

On Sat, Nov 24, 2007 at 12:25:32PM +0000, Pete French wrote:
> > You've already received the right advice about not renaming the INDEX,
> > but I think it's also worth mentioning that untar'ing a static picture
> > of the ports tree is of little practical value unless you never plan
> > to update the base, and you never plan to update any ports on that
> > machine.
> 
> Sorrty, but I do not understand this at all. Surely untarring the ports
> file is exactly what the installer does when you install BSD onto a machine?
> Why is doing it by hand any different ?

Not much. Some packages and a tarball of the ports tree are on the
installation CD for convenience.

If you have a fast internet connection, then don't bother installing
stuff from the CD, because it's dated by the time you install
it. Install the ports tree with portsnap, and then build the ports you
want (or get the latest packages if you don't fancy compiling
stuff). That way you'll get the latest ports.

> > You're much better off starting with downloading the tree with csup,
> > that way you can maintain it more easily down the road.
> 
> Won't running csup on the tree I just untarred work ? I use csup
> (and have used cvsup in the past) to update ports trees on machines
> I installed from CD, and it works fine. Unless the installer is doing
> something other than simply untarring that file I can't see why it isn't
> just going to work in the same way.

For keeping the ports tree up-to-date, portsnap is generally faster.
See §4.5 of the Handbook on how to use it.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
[plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated]
pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914  B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/attachments/20071124/0be6d88a/attachment.pgp