[wplug-bsd] /usr/ports maintenance mechanisms

[Rod Person]

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On Thursday 08 April 2004 9:24 pm, dlc+wplug-bsd at cs.cmu.edu wrote:
> But the questions are:
>
> Is an update of /usr/ports intended to be a mechanism to maintain
> the contents as if this were a newer version of /usr/ports from a
> distribution CD?  This is what I want.  I do not want to be sucking
> down distfiles, sources, etc.

You would update /usr/ports if you wanted to build from source, which you
say you don't want to do.

To get the latest package you would issue the command.

pkg_add -r "package_name" 

The -r tell pkg_add to go fetch it from the remote site. Of course you need to
be connect to the net for it to work. man pkg_add for more detail.

> It seems that /usr/ports for 4.X and 5.X may be shared or common in
> some way.  Is this true?  I do not want to discover that something
> done for the 5.X series breaks my system when I update /usr/ports.

Yes this is true. You shouldn't break anything unless you cvsup your sys 
files, which are different from the ports collection, using the wrong tag.

> If I do not want to build from source, what method should I use to
> update the "usr.bin" (?) package and other core components for FreeBSD?

If you are tracking usr.bin then you are trying to rebuild the base system not 
the packages. If you don't want to rebuild your base system from source the 
the recommended way would be to wait for the need release and download it.
If your tracking usr.bin then you should read about "Building World" and 
"Keeping Current" on the FreeBSD site in the Handbook.

> Finally, do I simply need to be more patient and expect portupgrade to
> find newer versions of packages infrequently?  I have had a 4.9 system
> since Jan 2004 (one, then replaced with another and a clean install).
> Everything pkg_add -r installs seems to be the same age as the 4.9
> distribution.  Is a distribution with its /usr/ports frozen at the
> time it is created?
>
> In summary, how should I maintain /usr/ports and other parts of the
> system when I do not want or need to run make?

Since you have cvsup the ports you should just use portinstall and portupgrade 
to track the ports. The ports in FreeBSD do not move as much as they do in 
Linux. If something is broke or your waiting on something to be ported that's 
a different story. I'm running 5.2.1 and I have had to update a port in about 
2 months. I've been using FreeBSD since 3.3 and from experience you don't 
really need to update all that much.

Now if you thinking about security patches for the kernal and base system then 
you want to talk about track "src" or "sys" not the "ports"

HTH


- -- 
Rod

http://opensourcebeef.homeunix.org
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