maintaining GUI ports

K

k2msmith

I have a a very stable system with all the installed ports that I need which I keep fully upgraded on a monthly basis on RELEASE 7.2. For that reason, I am using Xorg and a lightweight window manager, avoiding gnome and kde because of all the additional package overhead and dependencies (most of which I don't know anything about) which I would have to maintain to keep my system current.

Does anyone have any experience with gnome or gnome-lite ports and should I decide to install it, in your experience, how much overhead is there is keeping these packages updated and conflicts resolved ? I currently show 525 ports installed that that I am using (direct or indirectly) - and that is without gnome or kde.

Thanks
 
k2msmith said:
Does anyone have any experience with gnome or gnome-lite ports and should I decide to install it, in your experience, how much overhead is there is keeping these packages updated and conflicts resolved ?
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Between major updates Gnome is not too bad. Those are pretty simple, and do not require much diddling. The major updates (say, between 2.22 and 2.24) take more time to compile, if you go that way. The updates are not hard, but it does take a bit of time. And do read UPDATING.

There also are bugs to chase for the early releases of the major updates.

Conflicts are not an issue.

I've used Gnome since 2.4, and I've not had issues with the FreeBSD implementation, conflicts or anything other than bugs in the underlying Gnome release.

I'll let the KDE people speak for themselves, but I suspect those who use it will say much the same thing.

I show about 1000 ports on my box, but there is a lot on it beyond Gnome.
 
If you are going the gnome route I highly recommend installing gnome2-lite. It has a lot less dependencies and you can always install the other packages you want/need.
 
Keeping KDE up-to-date within a version (4.1.x -> 4.1.y, 4.2.x -> 4.2.y) is as simple as just updating the kde* ports as needed. Nothing special needs to be done.

When upgrading between versions (4.0 -> 4.1, 4.1 -> 4.2, 4.2 -> 4.3, etc), be sure to read /usr/ports/UPDATING and follow what's listed there.
 
Thanks to all for your feedback. I ended up building the gnome2-lite from /usr/ports along with compix-fusion for a WM replacement. About 150 additional packages later, I have a little nicer desktop :-). I don't quite understand what just about any of the gnome dependencies do, but I hope they play a role somewhere.

Thanks to all!
 
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