Avoiding upgrade to xorg 7.2

[Bram Moolenaar]

Nikola Lecic wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Jun 2007 23:23:01 +0200
> Bram Moolenaar <Bram at moolenaar.net> wrote:
> 
> > [...]
> > My problem is that for people who don't know exactly how the ports
> > system works and don't keep track of messages in CVS logs or maillists
> > it has become very difficult to use the ports system.  It's almost as
> > if it's only for a small group of people who keep their secrets away
> > from casual users.  I know this isn't so, but that's what it looks
> > like from the outside.
> >=20
> > My main complaint is that the dependencies are not working properly.
> > So I have xorg 6.9.  If I upgrade some port that works just fine with
> > xorg 6.9 there should not be a dependency on xorg 7.2.  This is a
> > generic problem with the ports system, it appears.
> > [...]=20
> 
> May I raise a hand here, among you great programmers :) Bram, I'm an
> ordinary ("casual") FreeBSD _user_ (which means, totally "from the
> outside"), and I must say I deeply disagree here.
> 
> Reading the mailing lists and possession of secret knowledge are not
> proviso to use the ports. One _has_ to read Handbook (once) and UPDATING
> (always). For plain installations, without tweaking, that's ALL, and
> it's simple. If one follows word by word what is written there,
> everything will work flawlessly and no special knowledge on how the
> ports system works is needed, including the case of Xorg update.
> 
> And that is the most impressive thing about FreeBSD, as we say here,
> that it "works as a Swiss watch", and does it at every moment, despite
> constant flow and changing. As of ports system, it's so smart and so
> perfectly done that the most basic usage and the most advanced
> tuning/hacking work hand-by-hand, with the same tools! The fact that it
> _works_ impresses me as a human handiwork and a genial construction,
> from a wider intellectual perspective, not only as a piece of software.
> 
> I humbly suggests you to follow those couple of steps from UPDATING
> (since it counts as a regular thing you always do), use packages to save
> the time, and your computer will be refreshed and shiny next morning.

Glad to hear you have good experiences with the port system.  I do
wonder how much downtime you have while updating the ports.

I'm afraid my experiences are not so good.  Many times I got stuck
halfway a port upgrade and somehow had to manually fix things.  I can't
risk breaking my machine to a level where X11 won't start.  So I'm very
careful with updating ports.  And I can't wait for a couple of days for
builds to finish (not to mention that there is very often something
wrong, such as running out of disk space, a file that can't be
downloaded, etc.).

The only policy that appears to work for me is to wait for a new FreeBSD
release, install it and then update the ports I use.  This takes a
couple of days, so I only do this twice a year.  Generally, after a
month or so the dependencies get so complicated that when updating a
small port triggers rebuilding nearly everything.

-- 
You can tune a file system, but you can't tuna fish
							-- man tunefs

 /// Bram Moolenaar -- Bram at Moolenaar.net -- http://www.Moolenaar.net   \\\
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