Default configuration for xorg-drivers (WTF?)

[Jonathan Noack]

On Tue, December 29, 2009 18:29, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
> Robert,
>
> Thanks for your quick response.
>
> In message <1262092734.2314.15.camel at balrog.2hip.net>, you wrote:
>>> Call me dense, but hope somebody can explain to me how this makes
>>> sense.
>>
>>run "make rmconfig && make config" in the xorg-drivers port.  Your
>>config is likely stale.
>
> Hummm... OK.  I learned something today.
>
> So, ah, basically you're telling me that "portsnap fetch update" DOES NOT
> flush out old/crusty/outdated port config files, yes?
>
> I confess, that I didn't know that.  (I was under the naive impression
> that "portsnap fetch update" made everything lovely, beautiful, and, most
> importantly, current.  I guess not.  Oh well.  Forewarned is forearmed.
> Thanks for the info.)

I always use the "-c" option with portinstall/portupgrade to run "make
config-conditional".  This checks all ports you're about to
install/upgrade and re-runs "make config" when it comes across a stale
config.  I think this is a fairly rudimentary "are all current options
defined in the saved config" check.  Here's a comment from
ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk:
# scan saved options and invalidate them, if the set of options does not
match

In any case, my understanding is that re-running "make config" does the
following before presenting you with the list of options via dialog(1):
1) Uses the saved value for pre-existing options already in your saved
config.
2) Uses the default value for new options not previously in your saved
config.
3) Removes obsolete options.

However, this does NOT catch changes to the default value.  It's a good
idea to revisit and compare your saved configuration versus the default
values every once in a while; I make this part of my FreeBSD release
upgrade procedure.

Note that if you're not using portinstall/portupgrade you can directly run
"make config-recursive" which will run "make config-conditional" for the
current port and for all of its dependencies.

-Jon