Re: how to upgrade a whole machine ...

["Jeremy C. Reed" <reed%reedmedia.net@localhost>]

On Thu, 8 May 2008, Tyler Retzlaff wrote:

> Using pkgsrc source means "build from source" your own binary packages.
> 
> I question whether or not most pkgsrc users (or developers) have really 
> tried using pkgsrc binary packages only.

Yes, for years on some systems (no pkgsrc tree ever installed).

> Run NetBSD (without comp.tgz and no pkgsrc.tar.gz extracted to the 
> system) + pkgtools + binary packages from ftp.netbsd.org for a while and 
> see how long it takes you to decide it is really hard.  Wait until you 
> have to upgrade a netbsd release or to a newer stable branch and see how 
> much harder it becomes.
> 
> I now do what most others do these days.  Build packages from source 
> using pkg_comp keep a copy somewhere and very carefully upgrade from 
> them (for stable branch updates) and for NetBSD release updates I just 
> rebuild the whole machine from scratch and swap it out with the one 
> being upgraded.


On my own workstation, I just use USE_ABI_DEPENDS=NO and "make replace" 
for packages I want to upgrade via pkgsrc or "pkg_add -uu" for binaries. I 
would use more binary packages from NetBSD, but the mix of its XFree86 and 
my X.org doesn't always work.

On production systems, I try to use just binary packages or "make replace" 
on a leaf package.

  Jeremy C. Reed