Re: Upgrading 1.2 to 1.4

["Alex Burke" <alexjeffburke@xxxxxxxxx>]

> One important thing to notice is the fact that DragonFly no longer
> supports ports for third-party application, since 1.4 NetBSD's pkgsrc is
> used. This probably means that all your current installed ports will
> cease to function (someone correct me if I'm wrong) and you should
> uninstall them before upgrading and then install the pkgsrc-version
> (might want to check so these packages are available).
>
Hi,

I could be wrong here, but I guess that after upgrade to 1.4 through
the make buildworld/buildkernel etc process the old ports would still
be there and linked against the older libraries (unless they are
removed/versions not bumped and the libraries simply replaced). It is
quite likely therefore that those binaries would keep on going,
although:

1) Since pkgsrc is now THE method to use for new ports and the older
ones were installed by dfports, the new package management tools used
by pkgsrc may not know they exist, making dependency tracking and
upgrade virtually impossible using pkgsrc methods

2) Again dependant on the library upgrade process, when installing new
things out of pkgsrc they would link against the latest C library. Any
older libraries laying around would have all the older dfports
binaries linked to them...and having new apps linked against
effectively different library verisons would produce undoubtedly
unexpected results.

Again, not exactly sure about the library issue - but even solely for
dependency tracking, I guess the best thing to do is either to
deinstall all dfports, upgrade the base system and reinstall all ports
again, but this time from pkgsrc (although that may unfortunately
leave stale files i guess) OR (and IMO better option is possible)
backup all data and config files, reinstall the system from 1.4 CD and
then install everything from pkgsrc.

Note, it might be worth waiting a few days if you can because an
updated 1.4 release CD is going to be created based on 1.4.4 code
IIRC, and this will contain a fix to an issue with the installer.

Apologies to everyone if this advice goes against any better pffical position.

Thanks, Alex J Burke.