On Mon, Oct 03, 2005 at 02:44:16PM +0200, Jeroen Ruigrok/asmodai wrote:
> Is there any compelling reason that make update deinstalls first and then
> goes to try to build the pkg?

This was covered on various mailing lists a number of times.

> In my naive eyes it would make more sense to:
> 
> build
> upon completion of build deinstall old package
> install new package

Keep in mind that the important case for "make update" is when other
packages depend on the current package. You can't correctly rebuild
those without installing the new version first. That in turn breaks the
installed software.

You can play with "make replace", but it has problems as well. On the
same note, that is a good reason to always build packages :-)

Joerg