updating packages

[Troy Telford]

Normally when I upgrade packages, I use the command:
	port upgrade outdated

Which works fine, however, in the end, I have a bunch of 'inactive' packages 
on the system.

I create RPM packages for Linux professionally; I'm familiar with the 
dependancies (on Linux, however), and I use Gentoo myself (which has its own 
ports-like system)

I'll readily admit that I don't yet understand the needs & issues with 
MacPorts; which is why I'm seeking greater wisdom ;)

When I try to uninstall many of the recently replaced packages (ie. they've 
become 'inactive'), I receive a dependancy message that I can't uninstall the 
port <foo>, as the following ports depend on it (followed by a list of 
ports).

One example I have is 'freetype', which understandibly has a number of 
dependancies.  One of them is cairo.

If I run `otool -L libcairo.2.dylib`, I get the list of libraries that it's 
linked against, and sure enough, libfreetype is there, with the 
string "(compatibility version 10.0.0, current version 10.15.0)"

So it appears that the new 'freetype' package satisfies the dependancies for 
cairo, and I can remove the 'inactive' package safely.

Is there are 'macports approved' method of removing inactive packages -- 
without messing up the dependancy tree?  I generally try to avoid 'forcing' a 
package removal, and I'm hoping there's a clean way to do it.

Any hints/documents I can read for what the 'correct' thing to do is?  It 
seems awfully wasteful to have many inactive versions of a particular 
package.

Thanks,
-- 
Troy Telford