On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 09:16:51PM -0400, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> There's also this statement in BUGS:
> 
>      If both package a and package b are to be updated, and a depends on b,
>      pkg_chk will correctly skip the update of a.  However, if a depends on b
>      and c, and all three are marked for update, pkg_chk will update b and c
>      in two separate passes, resulting in unnecessary rebuilding of a (and
>      potentially other packages).

This can be solved using this sequence: 

pkg_chk -g (generate a list of currently installed packages)
pkg_chk -r (delete outdated packages)
pkg_chk -ask (add missing packages)

This way, packages will be build only once.  If the last step fails
somewhere, you can try to solve the problem and repeat it, because 
you still have the list of the packages you had before the update
(pkgchk.conf).  

GH