[ On Tuesday, March 18, 2003 at 20:09:18 (-0700), Rick Kelly wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: why separate system and pkg hierarchies? (was: /usr/pkg/etc/rc.d/*)
>
> After upgrading the libraries and pkg A, it then rebuilds some of the other
> packages that it removed in a somewhat random way and skips others. Something
> like pkg B, D, F, L, P...

Hold on a moment.  Where does this "rebuilds" bit come from?

You're talking about pkgsrc _developement_!  (i.e. "make upgrade"!)

A static pkgsrc will behave no differently than installing binary
packages from a CD, and in no way will anything ever get removed without
an explicit "pkg_delete" command when you're using a static set of
packages!

> Disappearing software is strange.

I don't disagree with that but I'm also not talking about that kind of
use of pkgsrc -- far from it!

>  The pkgsrc system is good at making
> software disappear during upgrades.

Only if you use its more experimental and dangerous features.

Even on my development systems I don't ever use the "make upgrade"
target -- I agree it's just too dangerous.  I want to know exactly
what's being built and why at all times.  If I'm updating to a new
pkgsrc tree then I will manually delete everything that needs upgrading
and I'll keep a list of exactly what I've deleted and what has to be
re-installed.

I also leave $PREFIX as /usr/pkg on my development system just in case a
"make install" of a new package I'm working on myself overwrites an
existing file and I don't find out about it until the package
registration phase.  Only once I've proven the package is safe in my
local development environment (on the machine I call "proven.weird" :-)
do I re-build it on other test systems (one per supported architecture)
with PREFIX=/usr.

When it comes to upgrading my production systems I always have a
complete set of new and fully tested binary packages ready to install on
them.  (I generally don't ever build any software from source on any
production systems -- I only install well tested binaries on them.)

> It has become far easier for me to build thirdparty software myself. The
> pkgsrc system makes a lot of strange assumptions.

I think you'd have a lot more luck if you stayed away from experimental
features of pkgsrc like that "make upgrade" target.....

You'd certainly have a lot more luck if you stuck with one consistent
"release" of packages.....  :-)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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