Just to be clear, while I have been working with computers since 82, on the Internet since 88, on the Web since 92 and in the I.T. industry since 98, I am somewhat of a UNIX noob. To be specific, this is my first time working with Unix without any sort of a GUI, and it is driving me batty beyond belief.
For one thing, the actual ports system seems to be smoking crack and dropping acid.
For example, when I try to install any sort of a package with a dependency, even a very recent one, does it stump up for the latest version of the dependency? Nooo... it goes for one two versions older than it itself (at minimum… the record so far is 8 versions back, dating from 2008). I tried to install Apache 2.4, and all of a sudden it’s complaining that it cannot install because db4 is no longer supported and db5 or db6 is recommended. Like… WTF??
And this is only the beginning. The very latest version of PHP tries to install Apache 2.2, which cannot install because 2.4 is already installed. On a previous setup I had installed 2.2 first, and then tried to upgrade to 2.4 but that was refused because 2.2 was already installed.
When I tried to make use of portmaster, the vast majority of ports that are installed refuse to be recognized as older versions. As such, I could have MySQL 5.5 installed, and yet portmaster would absolutely refuse to recognize the fact that MySQL 5.6 has been released for quite some time now. It would utterly refuse to see that MySQL was available for updating. This was not just an isolated incident -- at least 80% of all ports that had upgrades available (as in, I could see new entries once portsnap was properly run) but portmaster breezed by them as if the latest versions were already installed.
I even tried to use the -o flag to get portmaster to manually move a software package from one version to another(such as:
Portmaster itself threw me a strange curveball -- it needs Python 2.7 and installs it, but doesn’t actually register it with the system -- even after using Portmaster to install Python 3.3.3, I still had to manually create a softlink so that running
I still don’t know how to force-update a port when it’s not being recognized as upgradable by portmaster (or even the regular commands, which refuse to install a newer version of a port when an older one is installed).
I am on the verge of installing a GUI like Gnome and some sort of third-party package management system where I can actually MANUALLY DETERMINE what versions of dependent ports are actually selected, instead of being forced to accept 2008’s well-worn hand-me-downs. Plus the ability to force-install ports that the system refuses to recognize as updatable even though updated versions are sitting in the ports system.
Any direction on how to properly manage such a schizophrenic package management system would be greatly appreciated. I would prefer to remain with a commandline in order to keep the system as slim as possible, but right now it’s appearing less and less likely. I’ve been hammering my head against this for three straight days (and as many reinstalls of FreeBSD) so any help beyond RTFM would be greatly appreciated. Because the manual was the first thing I actually went after… and it doesn’t seem to have helped.
For one thing, the actual ports system seems to be smoking crack and dropping acid.
For example, when I try to install any sort of a package with a dependency, even a very recent one, does it stump up for the latest version of the dependency? Nooo... it goes for one two versions older than it itself (at minimum… the record so far is 8 versions back, dating from 2008). I tried to install Apache 2.4, and all of a sudden it’s complaining that it cannot install because db4 is no longer supported and db5 or db6 is recommended. Like… WTF??
And this is only the beginning. The very latest version of PHP tries to install Apache 2.2, which cannot install because 2.4 is already installed. On a previous setup I had installed 2.2 first, and then tried to upgrade to 2.4 but that was refused because 2.2 was already installed.
When I tried to make use of portmaster, the vast majority of ports that are installed refuse to be recognized as older versions. As such, I could have MySQL 5.5 installed, and yet portmaster would absolutely refuse to recognize the fact that MySQL 5.6 has been released for quite some time now. It would utterly refuse to see that MySQL was available for updating. This was not just an isolated incident -- at least 80% of all ports that had upgrades available (as in, I could see new entries once portsnap was properly run) but portmaster breezed by them as if the latest versions were already installed.
I even tried to use the -o flag to get portmaster to manually move a software package from one version to another(such as:
portmaster -o lang/python27 lang/python33), but even that threw some strange error and refused to work 100% of the time.Portmaster itself threw me a strange curveball -- it needs Python 2.7 and installs it, but doesn’t actually register it with the system -- even after using Portmaster to install Python 3.3.3, I still had to manually create a softlink so that running
python -V actually gave me a result (the current version) from anywhere in the file system instead of “command not found”.I still don’t know how to force-update a port when it’s not being recognized as upgradable by portmaster (or even the regular commands, which refuse to install a newer version of a port when an older one is installed).
I am on the verge of installing a GUI like Gnome and some sort of third-party package management system where I can actually MANUALLY DETERMINE what versions of dependent ports are actually selected, instead of being forced to accept 2008’s well-worn hand-me-downs. Plus the ability to force-install ports that the system refuses to recognize as updatable even though updated versions are sitting in the ports system.
Any direction on how to properly manage such a schizophrenic package management system would be greatly appreciated. I would prefer to remain with a commandline in order to keep the system as slim as possible, but right now it’s appearing less and less likely. I’ve been hammering my head against this for three straight days (and as many reinstalls of FreeBSD) so any help beyond RTFM would be greatly appreciated. Because the manual was the first thing I actually went after… and it doesn’t seem to have helped.
