Re: how to upgrade a whole machine ...

["Aaron J. Grier" <agrier%poofygoof.com@localhost>]

On Wed, May 07, 2008 at 09:18:44PM +0300, Aleksey Cheusov wrote:
> It'd be VERY interesting for me to see a list of features you
> personally want.

* pkg_install updates are not robust

pkg_install -u or even -uu frequently get partway through an upgrade
before falling over with "package XXX requires version Y but version Z
found", if not simply coredumping, leaving the package I was intending
to update uninstalled.

pkg_install needs the ability to trace binary dependencies and figure
out what needs to be done _before_ doing work and touching any packages,
rather than failing in the middle of the process.  pkgsrc needs a robust
analog to "yum update foo" or "apt-get install foo".

* no consistent way to update security problems only

there is no consistent way to say "only update packages with security
issues".  old versions are fine, but old versions with security problems
are not.  my current workaround for this involves taking the output of
audit-packages and running via pkgdepgraph to generate a list of
packages for pkg_comp to build.  however, this frequently trips up
pkg_install's update.

* pkg_install-YYYYMMDD update procedure is special-cased

the process I use is quite curmudgeonly, but I have not discovered
another one.  I run

        (cd /usr/pkgsrc/pkgtools/pkg_install && \
         UPDATE_TARGET=package make update)

inside my pkg_comp.  updating from this binary package on the system
results in numerous versions of pkg_install installed:

        $ pkg_info -e pkg_install
        pkg_install-20050530
        pkg_install-20051107
        pkg_install-20051122
        pkg_install-20080422

why can't "pkg_comp build pkg_install" automatically do the right thing?
why do I have duplicate pkg_install packages?

-- 
  Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | 
agrier%poofygoof.com@localhost