[BUGS] Package management

[home at oranges.id.au]

Thank you everyone. I've changed my focus to other things for now, but
will get back to looking at this - and possibly hanging around on the
IRC channel - when I get a chance.
Cheers,
Greg.

On 29 July 2011 06:11, Callum Gibson <callumgibson at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> On 29Jul11 07:32, Peter Jeremy wrote:
> }>It is best to have the ports tree mostly up to date, right?
> }
> }Yes.
>
> Just to provide another point of view to think about, if there are
> no bugs or security issues with the software you have installed you
> can take a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach. It really
> depends on the purpose of the machine and the number of ports installed.
>
> For our little dev webserver at work, it's running 6.2-RELEASE and a
> small number of ports (web server, gnats, some perl), and there isn't
> much to be gained by trying to stay on the upgrade cycle and potentially
> introducing instability (in fact the whole of our production environment
> at work follows that principle, barring OS updates which are required by
> maintenance contracts - and which ironically are one of the major sources
> of issues in production if you ask me).
>
> However, on my home workstation I upgrade more regularly and have
> many hundreds of ports installed. My work workstation is somewhere in
> between (less brave to update because I need it to always be working - and
> things only break when you upgrade).
>
> }> A lot of
> }>these machines run FreeBSD 6.x, so I'm wondering if a ports tree newer
> }>than some date will result in dependency problems.
> }
> }It shouldn't result in dependency problems but it _will_ result in
> }build problems for some ports.  Once support for a particular base
> }release is dropped, build hacks to support that release will be
> }dropped from the ports system.  Support is actively removed from the
> }build infrastructure (/usr/ports/Mk) but it's up to committers to
> }remove it from individual ports.  There is a ports tree tagged to
> }show the last ports tree fully supported by FreeBSD6 but this tree
> }is not updated and therefore ports will be aut of date.
> }
> }I suggest you begin planning to migrate your systems to either 8.x or 9.0.
>
> Again, it does depend on the purpose of the machine. Maybe you could leave
> a machine at 6.X, but there are an increasing number of ports that are
> requiring a newer version of FreeBSD and other general improvements to
> the system, so in general I'd agree with Peter's sentiments.
>
> Potentially more important is to have all the machines at a known, consistent
> state which will make supporting them a lot easier.
>
>    C
>
> --
>
> Callum Gibson @ home
> http://members.optusnet.com.au/callumgibson/
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-- 
Gregory Orange