Hello!

> Is there a way to handle these minor updates to a package in a slightly
> cleaner way?  

Well, the short answer is: no, at least not yet.

The major problem is to be sure that its a "minor" update that does not
break anything. E.g. lesstif ppl warned that binaries compiled with
lesstif-0.87.0 might break when just using the new lesstif-87.1 ones
without recompiling cause they changed some inner structures.

But _if_ you are fairly sure nothing brakes, there is a "hack" I used
quite often now that seems to be reasonable in some cases:

Assume foo-1.0 is old and installed, foo-2.0 new.

1) mv /var/db/pkg/foo-1.0/+REQUIRED_BY /tmp
2) pkg_delete foo-1.0
3) pkg_add foo-2.0 (or do a `make install` for foo-2.0)
4) mv /tmp/+REQUIRED_BY /var/db/pkg/foo-2.0/+REQUIRED_BY
5) cat /var/db/pkg/foo-2.0/+REQUIRED_BY
   now edit +CONTENTS for each package listed and replace
   "@pkgdep foo-1.0" with "@pkgdep foo-2.0".
   This can be done with sed, but I am too lazy for now :)

If foo-2.0 was really "upgradable" then everything works now and should
be sane. At least I had no problems in cases I did above steps.

Of course in the long run we need something in the pkg_utilities
to deal with upgraded, but its non-trivial if you really want to
ensure that only pkgs that are upgradeable really get upgraded, others
not :)

Greets
-- 
   Name  : Thorsten Frueauf            Milano@irc cri@onaliM       //
   E-Mail: s_frueau@ira.uka.de oder ukfy@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de     \X/