"`port -pf upgrade outdated` is incredibly unsafe" ??

[Lawrence Velázquez]

On May 28, 2015, at 1:09 PM, Kurt Pfeifle <kurt.pfeifle at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Ok then: which one of the two switches is the unsafe one? I guess the -f? Or has the combination of the two even more damage potential?

They're both unsafe.

"-f" does different things depending on the build phase, but all of them amount to plowing through despite problems. For instance, activating a port usually fails if some of that port's files already exist. Force-activating just overwrites those files.

"-p" tells MacPorts to continue processing ports and commands, even on failure. This can cause problems when upgrading a port and its dependencies, as MacPorts will blindly continue to upgrade ports despite their dependencies' builds failures.


> I started to make it a habit using them, because so often the upgrade does not run through to continue with a few hundred other packages because of just one or two or three packages fail…

Ignoring errors is a bad way to handle this situation. You should upgrade more often or uninstall some ports. (And report build failures to us, naturally.)


> If the -f (or the combo of -pf) is indeed so terribly unsafe as you say (I do not doubt your statement, even though I do not understand the reason for it), then there should be at least one of the following:
> 
> 	• Add a warning (including the reason for it) to the port manpage.
> 	• Emit a warning on the command line, whenever this option is used.

Those are good ideas.


vq