MHC SoftWare Wiki

Introduction

Keeping ported applications up to date is a bit trickier than just installing them in the first place. The process I use may be useful as an example, so here it is. Updating Ports With Dependencies

If a new version of a program comes out, why can’t you just deinstall the old version and install the new one?

For a high-level program like, say, Firefox, you can. It’s the lower-level programs that are trickier. For example, consider the jpeg graphics library. New versions of the library may work differently or have different interfaces than the old. Firefox, expecting the old version of jpeg, may not be able to use the new version correctly, or at all.

Simple enough, you say, I’ll just install the new version of Firefox also. Yes… except it might not be just Firefox, and there might be a chain of dependencies that have to be updated in a particular order. For example, Firefox depends a bunch of things that depend on the tiff library, which in turn depends on jpeg. Some of these things have to be rebuilt when the jpeg code changes, some do not. Dependency rebuilds have to be done in the correct order; jpeg has to be rebuilt before tiff can be rebuilt, and so on up the chain.

The complexity of figuring out what has to be rebuilt and in what order can be simplified by having a program work it all out for you. Software For Updating Ports

Here, we’ll use portsnap(8) to update the ports collection and portmaster, found in /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/portmaster, to upgrade ports.

portsnap is the faster, simpler, and preferred way to update the ports collection, so that choice is easy.

There are a variety of port upgrade programs. portmaster(8) is used here as the new standard, and the most actively supported. Updating The Ports Collection

The Ports Collection is a list of build instructions located in /usr/ports. Download and initialize it with

# portsnap fetch extract

That’s only required the very first time. Afterward, updates are downloaded and updated with

# portsnap fetch update

Checking For Updates

Now the installed applications can be compared to the versions in the ports collection.

# portmaster -L –index-only| egrep '(ew|ort) version|total install'

      ===>>> New version available: bash-4.1.10

==⇒» 674 total installed ports

This example shows a single port that needs updating. Automating The Update

It’s easy to automate the ports collection update with a small shell script:

#!/bin/sh /usr/sbin/portsnap fetch update && \ /usr/local/sbin/portmaster -L –index-only | egrep '(ew|ort) version|total install'

Checking UPDATING

/usr/ports/UPDATING contains notes about updating ports that require special procedures. Always, yes always, read this file for special notes before updating ports.

Only entries that have been added since the last time you updated ports are relevant. That date can be determined from the package database:

echo -n „Last update: “ date -r `pkg query %t | sort | tail -n1` „+%Y%m%d“

This can be added to the end of the update script shown above. Updating Installed Applications

Use portmaster to update the outdated port from the example above:

# portmaster bash

portmaster first checks that everything the port depends on is present. Then it rebuilds that port, and finally rebuilds all ports that depend on it.

If there is more than one outdated port, just list them all on the command line. portmaster will work out the dependencies and build order. Odd Situations

Sometimes it’s helpful to have portmaster figure out what needs to be upgraded and in what order, but not actually do it. This can be useful if something needs to be done manually during a step, or you want to break up an upgrade of a lot of ports into smaller pieces.

# portmaster -na ==⇒» Starting check of installed ports for available updates ==⇒» Launching child to update bash-4.1.9 to bash-4.1.10

==⇒» Port directory: /usr/ports/shells/bash

==⇒» Gathering dependency list for shells/bash from ports ==⇒» Initial dependency check complete for shells/bash ==⇒» Returning to update check of installed ports

>>> Starting build for for ports that need updating <<<