port -u upgrade outdated

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 4, 2007, at 15:44, Emmanuel Hainry wrote:

> Citando Thomas De Contes :
>
>> port -u uninstall
>> is equvalent to
>> port uninstall inactive
>> ?

I had never used "port -u uninstall" before, but yes, those appear to  
be equivalent.

>> port -u upgrade anything
>> is equvalent to
>> port upgrade anything
>> port uninstall inactive
>> am I right ?

No, "port -u upgrade foo" uninstalls inactive versions of foo before  
activating the new version of foo. It does not affect ports other  
than foo. "port uninstall inactive" uninstalls all inactive ports  
(whether those ports are foo or bar or baz or whatever).


>> so,
>>
>> port -u upgrade outdated
>> doesn't works because it needs -f to uninstall

Right, if ports depend on the ports being upgraded, then -f is needed  
so MacPorts won't complain.

>> port -fu upgrade outdated
>> is not fine, because with upgrade it rebuilds all dependencies, so  
>> it needs
>> -n to build only outdated

Right.

>> port -nfu upgrade outdated
>> doesn't works because the upgrade is not done in the right  
>> order ... :-( !

I believe that's right. I'm not sure what order the upgrades are done  
in, but I'm not convinced it's the right order.

> I must be misunderstanding what you want to achieve. I thought you
> wanted a script that updates all your outdated ports and does not  
> leave
> inactive. In this case, there is no reason to use the -n flag : you  
> want
> the dependencies to be updated too if they are outdated, don't you?  
> (Or
> else why do you upgrade all outdated ports?)

As explained, -n is recommended, and -f is necessary if ports depend  
on the port being upgraded (that is, if the port has dependents):

> Then, I would do:
>
> While there exist an outdated port,
> do
> 	let foo be an outdated port,
> 	'port update foo'
> loop
> port -f uninstall inactive
>
> Everything will have been updated in the good order, nothing will have
> been built twice, the only argument against this I see is that it will
> run port outdated a big number of times (and of course that some ports
> depending on updated ones will be broken, which is why port update  
> does
> not uninstall by default in the first place...).

By this method, everything will *not* be updated "in the good order";  
everything will be updated in the order in which "port outdated"  
prints ports, which I believe is alphabetical order, and that's not  
necessarily good. Consider that apache2 depends on apr and apr-util,  
and that apr-util also depends on apr. "port outdated" would print  
these in the following order: apache2, apr, apr-util. So if you  
upgrade these in alphabetical order, apache2 will be upgraded first,  
and it will build against your old version of apr and apr-util. Then  
apr will be upgrated, and then apr-util will be upgrated and will  
link against the new version of apr. If the changes in apr and apr- 
util are minor (binary compatible with the previous release), this  
won't be a problem, but if the ABI changed, then apache2 will be  
broken after apr and apr-util are upgraded. Also, it may be a problem  
that apache2 uses apr-util but apache2 and apr-util have been built  
against different versions of apr.

Furthermore, "port upgrade foo" will fail to activate the new port,  
and fail to deactivate the old version of the port, if a port depends  
on the port foo. For example, "port upgrade apr-util" will fail  
because apache2 depends on apr-util. You need to force the upgrade  
with -f. However, apr-util also depends on expat, libiconv, db44 and  
sqlite3. Consider that these ports are not outdated. However, if you  
"port -f upgrade apr-util", apr, expat, libiconv, db44 and sqlite3  
will all be rebuilt. You don't need and therefore probably don't want  
this, which is why -n is used to specify that dependencies should not  
be followed: "port -nf upgrade apr-util". If you add -u at this time  
to instruct MacPorts to uninstall the previous version before  
activating the new one ("port -nfu upgrade foo"), you can skip the  
"port -f uninstall inactive" step at the end.