Re: How to automatically update dependencies when building a package?

["David Lord" <netbsd%lordynet.org@localhost>]

On 13 Feb 2011 at 7:42, Thomas Mueller wrote:

> I wouldn't have thought updating pkgsrc would cause ABI conflicts and make 
> packages incompatible.
> 
> FreeBSD ports system does not have that problem; no problem running
> 
> portsnap fetch update
> 
> I never even heard of ABI in FreeBSD.
> 
> Now I see why there is a quarterly pkgsrc in addition to current pkgsrc in 
> NetBSD pkgsrc, unlike FreeBSD ports and source-based Linux package managers.
> 
> But I don't want to wait three months when a new release of something like 
> Gnumeric or Seamonkey comes out; I also might want to test a new beta release 
> installed to a different prefix to avoid conflict with installed stable 
> version.  What if there is a security update, then also I don't want to wait 
> for the next quarterly pkgsrc.
> 
> I guess I have to run
> 
> make depends-options
> 
> in all packages of interest and build all in quick succession, after setting 
> options of interest. 
> 
> This could mean an extended downtime on the computer.
> 
> I'm afraid running pkg_rolling-replace on a system with a lot of packages 
> could take an awful long time, like several days.

 
I build packages for my pcs on one of two fileservers.
With 2010Q4 and 1600+ existing packages I gave up to
pkg_rolling-replace with around 160 still to go. After 
that I used pkg_chk to delete all packages still to
replace and used "pkg_chk -s -a" to go through
remainder. None of the packages deleted by pkg_chk 
were in use on fileserver so no downtime.

Next quarter I intend to try pkg_comp to do upgrade
in a chroot on the fileserver. Pkg_rolling-replace
or pkg_chk can then be used to update from the
prebuilt packages. Using pkg_chk if needed  might
involve some downtime.

My experience with updates to Linux and FreeBSD have
mainly been from binaries rather than from source and
I wouldn't compare that with buiding from source on
NetBSD. When I started with NetBSD-1.5x and pcs with
only 8 MB ram I was able to install the few packages
I needed from prebuilt  binaries and later on more
capable hardware X-windows desktop which was comparable
to binary package installs on other os.


David


> I see Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/) has several projects in the works, 
> including porting to the BSDs and other quasi-Unixes.
> 
> Tom
>