This is a good question.  

First, I think that the pkg system needs an overhaul to eliminate glitches;
there is talk of a unified package system among free/net/open bsd, and I
hope it happens.  Today, our package system is really quite primitive.

To your question, you need to notice what sort of problem you're having to
know exactly what to do.   In one recent case I had (on 1.4.1) none of the
"standard" fixes worked, so I downloaded the most recent pkgsrc.tar.gz
and that "solved" the problem.

Now, to be fair, netbsd's package system is ambitious, and other package
systems don't try nearly as hard to be correct, or mostly distribute
binaries.

But that's not an excuse for, as you say, "bugs/glitches/failures/crashes/etc"

-Mike


On 4 Sep 2000, Sean Doran wrote:

> 
> Hi -
> 
>   How do people deal with bugs/glitches/failures/crashes/etc. 
> that happen in the middle of "make update"ing a package with
> lots of dependencies?
> 
>         Sean.
>