markbsd said:
I'm happy to do that, but I still need to upgrade perl to 5.16 for other packages I want to install, like firefox, and xfce4! This has really screwed me.
This thread is why I wish the
/var/db/pkg/portname-# >>
pkg
conversion had a problem > solution flowchart... ( for instance often in perl upgrades (I run
perl5-14 but packages I expect now use
perl5-16 ...) ) in the sense that packages may contain often dependencies that locally have not been updated to the default version, etc... I don't believe that the new packages system has too many bugs, per se, just that it has enough missing features that it should have been delayed as the default. I can grep
/var/db/pkg files in a pipe to reinstall ports which have been installed via package when they should have been installed via ports... fiddle with the directories in
/var/db/pkg (temporarily rename to allow duplicate installs of conflicting ports which for some reason may both need to be installed, etc... ) and countless other fixes/workarounds which with more effort, one would just choose to not install, instead.
Howsoever, I could write on and on... but have been outvoted. Meanwhile,
pkg
has not been building here for months, with a sqlite3.so error.
My point is not to disparage
/pkg/
but am posting in the hopes that one or two or more persons reading the post will concur that the package system would be served by such a flowchart, constantly revised... making it more user-friendly even to those not yet using FreeBSD but who may be swayed by simply reading the flowchart should it ever appear. [Not to discourage a multipage EXAMPLES section that would contain all the fixes/workarounds in a more verbose manner than is common except in exceptionally informative manpages, a few of which exist already. And common problems could be fixed by code to make the EXAMPLES list or flowchart size less sizable, a problem repository immediately available to all without further search, so to speak.
[edit...]
In the freebsd-questions list this week, (Vol 494 # 1 of the digest form...) there is a long thread about "How to install two freebsd9.2 on one disk?" which has many command-line examples, several scenarios, the bootloader, GPT vs MBR... re the FLOWCHART method of user help, if all the information in that thread (for example ) were combined with the short EXAMPLES in
man gpart
and summarized (I know, a wiki, but many do not look there "first", as a matter of recourse...) it could be helpful in a similar manner to the topic of this thread, maybe having first recourse to a flowchart or very verbose EXAMPLES section.