[BUGS] Package management

[Callum Gibson]

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/