Ports updated without maintainer notification?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On May 8, 2021, at 14:26, Jason Liu wrote:

> Running port -d sync results in the updated ports now showing up in the list of outdated ports. I was under the impression that port selfupdate ran port sync as a part of the self-update process? Or am I mistaken, and port sync needs to be added to my nightly script?

selfupdate does a sync for you, unless you run selfupdate with the --no-sync flag. It is possible for sync (whether performed separately or as part of selfupdate) or the subsequent portindexing to fail; the debug output produced by running with the -d flag should let you see if that's happening.


> It's not the individual libraries that I'm worried about. It's the fact that these libraries are dependencies for my Blender port. Blender typically uses slightly outdated versions of all of its dependent libraries. Very complex libraries are a particular risk. For example, trying to use the newest version of usd is causing blender builds to fail on my machine. I remember a time when ports with lots of dependencies, such as gimp, could be broken for weeks at a time, because updates to one or more of its dependencies was causing gimp builds to fail. Admittedly, this was an experience from a decade ago, but it did leave a lasting impression.

Sounds like this may be a case where not listing openmaintainer for blender and its dependencies that you maintain would be a valid choice.

I know you added a lot of blender's dependencies specifically for blender to use, so holding them back in order to be compatible with blender may be workable here.

In general though, that's hard to do, since most libraries are used by more than one port. Holding back a library to be compatible with one port may not be the right choice for other ports that depends on the library.


> Is there some way that I can signal not to update certain libraries without verifying against blender? Should I leave some sort of warning comment in the portfiles?

A comment in the portfile, near where the version is defined since that's where someone updating the port will look first, is a great way to communicate that.