Thanks Stuart, That was quite a complete answer. I think in my case to be certain any errors I might find using ports are not due to something outdated on my system I should follow your instructions and pull the updated CVS first especially after doing a release upgrade.
Regards Ed Gray On Thu, 29 Oct 2020, 10:35 am Stuart Henderson, <s...@spacehopper.org> wrote: > On 2020-10-28, Ed Gray <e.mask....@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi Marc, > > > > Thanks for your reply. I think maybe this belongs to ports more than > misc. > > But it's a general query about releases and ports as well. > > > > My question was actually about updating the ports tree from an older > > release version before trying to use it rather than whether to use ports > or > > packages. > > The ports tree does not install things directly, it *always* builds > packages. > "make install" runs pkg_add to install the locally built package. Unless > you > modify the ports or there's some non-deterministic build behaviour (which > would > usually be considered a bug in the port) there's no difference whether you > build it yourself or use a pre-built package, just an increased chance of > frustration if things don't work (and there are more things that can go > wrong). > > > I installed 6.2 release I believe and later upgraded to 6.6 release. I > > pulled the release version of ports at some point and later tried to > build > > a port which failed due to an outdated dependency. My version of the > ports > > tree was outdated but even the newer 6.6 stable version was also > outdated. > > When I sent my original email 6.6 was still one of the supported releases > > along with 6.7. > > > > I guess my question is if I run 6.x release and want to build port xyz > can > > I expect a port to build using the ports tree that came with the 6.x > > release or must I always use at least the stable version of the ports > tree? > > If you run release X.Y then the supported options are to use a ports tree > with > cvs tag OPENBSD_X_Y_BASE (the tree at the time of release) or OPENBSD_X_Y > (-stable). > > > The following question is then if I have a problem building a port due to > > an outdated dependency on a supported release should I report it as an > > issue with the port even if a newer release of openbsd does not have the > > issue? > > Excepting minor problems (not usually seen for releases but sometimes seen > in > -current) the tree at a particular checkout should be internally > consistent, > the dependencies needed are in that tree. We build complete sets of > packages > on the faster architectures several times a week so problems with this > would > show up. > > If you mean an outdated dependency *on your system* rather than in the > ports > tree then that would be because you haven't updated installed packages > first. > (There will also likely be a mixture of library versions that will cause > conflicts if you build ports with the system in this stage). > > If you really want to build from ports to update your system then you > either > need to deal with figuring out which to build first to avoid incorrect > combinations (noting that some ports cannot be built, or cannot be > *correctly* > built, while an older version of themselves is already installed), or > uninstall > all packages and build the complete set that you want. > > Otherwise the standard procedure is update base, pkg_add -u, cvs up the > ports > tree for the branch that matches the OpenBSD version you're running, and > then > you can expect that versions of dependencies are usually correct (special > case: > if you run a slow architecture with -current snapshots, the package > snapshot > might be too old to be useful, in that case you will need to build a bunch > more yourself). > > >
