[Bug 230837] x11-servers/xorg-server: make install fails for xorg-server-1.18.4_9,1

bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org
Fri Aug 24 11:04:19 UTC 2018


https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=230837

--- Comment #4 from Adrian Bocaniciu <a.bocaniciu at computer.org> ---
The sequence of events leading to this failure was the following:

1. Soon after installing FreeBSD 11-RELEASE some time in 2016, I have installed
xorg-server, I believe it was 1.17.something and I have used with an NVIDIA
card and with XFCE.

2. Some time ago the NVIDIA card was removed. Now I needed again to connect a
monitor and I tried to install x11-drivers/xf86-video-ast

3. Attempting to install a new video driver failed with an error message saying
that the installed xorg-server is no longer supported and that I must update it
ASAP

4. Attempting to install the current xorg-server failed and the previous
xorg-server was deinstalled

5. Now, after deinstalling the previous xorg-server, its dependencies are
orphaned and I see a lot of *proto ports


The *proto ports no longer exist in /usr/ports so I cannot do "make deinstall'.
"pkg autoremove" also failed to remove most of the *proto orphaned ports.


I seldom use pkg, so I have been surprised by its behavior. Doing "pkg delete"
on one of the *proto also removed some ports that do not depend on xorg-server,
e.g. firefox, which was used over VNC, without xorg-server. Now I will have to
reinstall those.


After deleting the orphaned ports and after a few other hiccups, e.g. having
from time to time to deinstall various ports and/or having to delete their
options from /var/db/ports, I have eventually succeeded to install xorg-server.


I have been using FreeBSD for more than 20 years, since 2.0, but I have never
paid much attention to how the dependencies are checked, because usually it
just works.

Now I have noticed that in FreeBSD the presence of some files belonging to the
required ports is checked, unlike in all the other operating systems which I am
using, where what is checked is the presence of the ports listed as
dependencies (in the installed ports database).

It is debatable which method is better. I believe that with the FreeBSD method
it is more difficult to handle dependencies of certain versions of some port or
to handle the case when you need to have simultaneously installed many versions
of the same port.


In any case, this particular bug could not happen in a system where the
presence of xorgproto would have been checked, instead of checking the presence
of some files which were also provided by obsolete ports which do not exist any
more in /usr/ports.

I believe that in this special case, the Makefile for xorg-server should do
some check for the presence of xorgproto, to avoid the confusion of the users.



There was no way for me to guess which might have been the reason why
xorg-server fails to be installed.


I do not know which is the UPDATING referred by you. "/usr/src/UPDATING" does
not contain any information about xorg-server.

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