FreeBSD system and ports upgrading question

A

alexixor

Hello all.

I am not sure if this fits here or in the ports forum, please feel free to relocate the thread if necessary.

If I have a FreeBSD 7 server, I would not have to upgrade the whole OS, if I want to upgrade MySQL 5.0 to 5.1, right?

Or in reverse, if I have installed Mysql 5.0 on FreeBSD 7.4 and I decide to upgrade FreeBSD to 8.2, I won't have to upgrade Mysql too, right?

So following this, I can "decouple" OS updates from "third party applications", which is important and convenient, IMO.

Or am I completely wrong about this?
 
OS and applications can be upgraded separately, so long as you stay within a major OS release. So you can upgrade FreeBSD from 8.0-RELEASE all the way to (for the sake of argument) 8.9-STABLE without having to recompile your posts. But when you go to FreeBSD 9 you will have to recompile your ports, or run a compatibility layer (basically a port that will be called misc/compat8x containing the older libraries). The latter only as a temporary measure.
 
Taking this a bit further, say I have a FreeBSD 6 system. Would I be able to update/upgrade say apache "indefinitely"?

Or in other words, is there a minimum FreeBSD version that a port requires?
 
Some ports require certain versions of the operating system. It depends on the port. But it's not just apache, but all the ports it depends on.
 
How can I know if a specific version of the OS is required?

Can I find it from the description on Fresh Ports, for example?
 
The manual way is to look in the port Makefile for tests on OSVERSION.

It would be easier if there was a recursive way to check for OSVERSION dependencies, or BROKEN or IGNORE variables. Maybe make missing, but I don't think so.

But more to the point: trying to stick with an old version of FreeBSD while updating ports is a mistake. Upgrading the OS isn't particularly difficult, and has real benefits. Trying to upgrade just one port while keeping old versions of the others is another strategy that is counterproductive.
 
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