Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*)
Hello, Is there a way to determine exactly what a particular port will install on my machine? Doing a `make pretty-print-run-depends-list` will show me all of its requirements... but I am interested in the difference between its requirements and what I already have on my machine. If I have 7 out of the 10 requirements I would like the remaining 3 listed for me. Is there something in place which provides this? -- Regards, Eric ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*)
Is there a way to determine exactly what a particular port will install on my machine? Doing a `make pretty-print-run-depends-list` will show me all of its requirements... but I am interested in the difference between its requirements and what I already have on my machine. If I have 7 out of the 10 requirements I would like the remaining 3 listed for me. Is there something in place which provides this? The "portupgrade" port can do this. Something like... portupgrade -n -Rr someport The -n tells it not to do anything, just show you what it would do. The -r and -R tell it to upgrade any dependencies in both directions. At the end it will print out a little summary of what ports it needs to upgrade, what needs installed, and what you've already got. -philip ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*)
Philip Hallstrom wrote: Is there a way to determine exactly what a particular port will install on my machine? Doing a `make pretty-print-run-depends-list` will show me all of its requirements... but I am interested in the difference between its requirements and what I already have on my machine. If I have 7 out of the 10 requirements I would like the remaining 3 listed for me. Is there something in place which provides this? The "portupgrade" port can do this. Something like... portupgrade -n -Rr someport The -n tells it not to do anything, just show you what it would do. The -r and -R tell it to upgrade any dependencies in both directions. At the end it will print out a little summary of what ports it needs to upgrade, what needs installed, and what you've already got. This sounds like what I'm looking for... so I tried it. But its giving me difficulties. I am using `portupgrade -nN -rR "x11-fm/rox-filer"` for example. I know I have most, but not all, of what is needed by rox-filer. I was hoping to see a concise list of things I am missing (and would therefore be installed). In my example I used the `-N` switch because the man page sounded like that what was needed when the port is not currently installed (which is my situation). But portupgrade reports ---> Session started at: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 16:23:07 -0500 Install 'x11-fm/rox-filer'? [no] ---> Session ended at: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 16:23:07 -0500 (consumed 00:00:00) What am I doing wrong? Thanks. -philip -- Regards, Eric ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*)
Philip Hallstrom wrote: Is there a way to determine exactly what a particular port will install on my machine? Doing a `make pretty-print-run-depends-list` will show me all of its requirements... but I am interested in the difference between its requirements and what I already have on my machine. If I have 7 out of the 10 requirements I would like the remaining 3 listed for me. Is there something in place which provides this? The "portupgrade" port can do this. Something like... portupgrade -n -Rr someport The -n tells it not to do anything, just show you what it would do. The -r and -R tell it to upgrade any dependencies in both directions. At the end it will print out a little summary of what ports it needs to upgrade, what needs installed, and what you've already got. This sounds like what I'm looking for... so I tried it. But its giving me difficulties. I am using `portupgrade -nN -rR "x11-fm/rox-filer"` for example. I know I have most, but not all, of what is needed by rox-filer. I was hoping to see a concise list of things I am missing (and would therefore be installed). In my example I used the `-N` switch because the man page sounded like that what was needed when the port is not currently installed (which is my situation). But portupgrade reports ---> Session started at: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 16:23:07 -0500 Install 'x11-fm/rox-filer'? [no] ---> Session ended at: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 16:23:07 -0500 (consumed 00:00:00) What am I doing wrong? That I can't help you with... maybe there's more options (verbose mode?) that would show it... I tend to only use portupgrade for upgrading already installed ports... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*)
At 4:25 PM -0500 4/30/05, Eric Schuele wrote: Philip Hallstrom wrote: The "portupgrade" port can do this. Something like... portupgrade -n -Rr someport The -n tells it not to do anything, just show you what it would do. This sounds like what I'm looking for... so I tried it. But its giving me difficulties. I am using `portupgrade -nN -rR "x11-fm/rox-filer"` for example. I believe that 'portupgrade -n' only works right for ports which you have already installed. It keeps a database of already-installed ports, and that's what it is using to track '-Rr'. Or at least, 'portupgrade -nN' never does anything useful for me, even though it is very useful to do 'portupgrade -n -Rr' when upgrading ports you have already installed. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn= [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteor [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*)
Garance A Drosihn wrote: At 4:25 PM -0500 4/30/05, Eric Schuele wrote: Philip Hallstrom wrote: The "portupgrade" port can do this. Something like... portupgrade -n -Rr someport The -n tells it not to do anything, just show you what it would do. This sounds like what I'm looking for... so I tried it. But its giving me difficulties. I am using `portupgrade -nN -rR "x11-fm/rox-filer"` for example. I believe that 'portupgrade -n' only works right for ports which you have already installed. It keeps a database of already-installed ports, and that's what it is using to track '-Rr'. Or at least, 'portupgrade -nN' never does anything useful for me, even though it is very useful to do 'portupgrade -n -Rr' when upgrading ports you have already installed. Yes... That is the conclusion I have come to. I'm sure what I am trying to accomplish is just one savvy shell script away I'm just not that savvy though. If I can't find something which already does what I'm looking for I'll muddle through writing a script to do it. -- Regards, Eric ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*)
At 9:42 AM -0500 5/2/05, Eric Schuele wrote: Garance A Drosihn wrote: I believe that 'portupgrade -n' only works right for ports which you have already installed. Yes... That is the conclusion I have come to. I'm sure what I am trying to accomplish is just one savvy shell script away I'm just not that savvy though. If I can't find something which already does what I'm looking for I'll muddle through writing a script to do it. If there isn't anything which already exists, then I'd try something along the lines of 'cd'-ing into the directory of the port you want to install, and getting the output of: make -V RUN_DEPENDS -V BUILD_DEPENDS -V LIB_DEPENDS (that should give you three lines, some or all of which might be blank lines). Each non-blank line will be of the form "a1:b1 a2:b2 ...", where each "a" is a pathname, and each "b" is a portname. I'll leave it to you to decide where you go from there... You might want to check through: cd /usr/ports/sysutils/port* and see if any of those already do what you want to see done. -- Garance Alistair Drosehn= [EMAIL PROTECTED] Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rensselaer Polytechnic Instituteor [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
RE: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*)
> -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Garance A Drosihn > Sent: Monday, May 02, 2005 10:14 AM > To: Eric Schuele > Cc: FreeBSD Questions > Subject: Re: Determining what a port will install... (more > than pretty-print-*) > > If there isn't anything which already exists, then I'd try > something along the lines of 'cd'-ing into the directory of > the port you want to install, and getting the output of: > > make -V RUN_DEPENDS -V BUILD_DEPENDS -V LIB_DEPENDS > If pkg-plist exists, that could give you a complete list of the files installed and where they are installed. Paul Schmehl ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Adjunct Information Security Officer The University of Texas at Dallas AVIEN Founding Member http://www.utdallas.edu/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*)
Garance A Drosihn wrote: At 9:42 AM -0500 5/2/05, Eric Schuele wrote: Garance A Drosihn wrote: I believe that 'portupgrade -n' only works right for ports which you have already installed. Yes... That is the conclusion I have come to. I'm sure what I am trying to accomplish is just one savvy shell script away I'm just not that savvy though. If I can't find something which already does what I'm looking for I'll muddle through writing a script to do it. If there isn't anything which already exists, then I'd try something along the lines of 'cd'-ing into the directory of the port you want to install, and getting the output of: make -V RUN_DEPENDS -V BUILD_DEPENDS -V LIB_DEPENDS (that should give you three lines, some or all of which might be blank lines). Each non-blank line will be of the form "a1:b1 a2:b2 ...", where each "a" is a pathname, and each "b" is a portname. I'll leave it to you to decide where you go from there... Thanks for the pointers. You might want to check through: cd /usr/ports/sysutils/port* and see if any of those already do what you want to see done. Will do. -- Regards, Eric ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*) [Soln]
Hello, Some time back I posted a question regarding how to determine what ports/packages would need to be installed on my machine when I install a new (new to the local machine) port. For example, if I do not presently have openoffice installed... what will get installed when I 'make install clean' it? Note that I want the differences between what is needed to build/run the port and what is already present on the machine. At the time no one responded with a clear way to do this... so I finally had a few minutes to write a script to do it for me. I thought someone else might find it useful... So I'm posting it here for comments and thoughts (be gentle, I'm new to awk). I find it useful, especially for laptops... which may have a small HDD and little memory. I generally try to install the minimum necessary to do my work. #! /bin/sh # Script to determine the differences between what is necessary for # a port, and what is already present on the local machine. make pretty-print-build-depends-list | \ awk '{ count = 0 pkgs = "" for(i=5; i<=NF-2; i++) { pkg = $i if (index(pkg, "\"") == 1) {pkg = substr(pkg, 2, length(pkg)-1)} if (index(pkg, "\"") > 1) {pkg = substr(pkg, 1, length(pkg)-1)} if ( system("pkg_info -e " pkg) == 1) { pkgs = pkgs " " pkg count++ } } if ( count ) { print "You need the following (build) perequisites:" print pkgs } else { print "All (build) prerequisites are present." } }' make pretty-print-run-depends-list | \ awk '{ count = 0 pkgs = "" for(i=5; i<=NF-2; i++) { pkg = $i if (index(pkg, "\"") == 1) {pkg = substr(pkg, 2, length(pkg)-1)} if (index(pkg, "\"") > 1) {pkg = substr(pkg, 1, length(pkg)-1)} if ( system("pkg_info -e " pkg) == 1) { pkgs = pkgs " " pkg count++ } } if ( count ) { print "You need the following (run) perequisites:" print pkgs } else { print "All (run) prerequisites are present." } }' -- Regards, Eric ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*) [Soln]
hmm... apologies on the poor formating. Eric Schuele wrote: Hello, Some time back I posted a question regarding how to determine what ports/packages would need to be installed on my machine when I install a new (new to the local machine) port. For example, if I do not presently have openoffice installed... what will get installed when I 'make install clean' it? Note that I want the differences between what is needed to build/run the port and what is already present on the machine. At the time no one responded with a clear way to do this... so I finally had a few minutes to write a script to do it for me. I thought someone else might find it useful... So I'm posting it here for comments and thoughts (be gentle, I'm new to awk). I find it useful, especially for laptops... which may have a small HDD and little memory. I generally try to install the minimum necessary to do my work. #! /bin/sh # Script to determine the differences between what is necessary for # a port, and what is already present on the local machine. make pretty-print-build-depends-list | \ awk '{ count = 0 pkgs = "" for(i=5; i<=NF-2; i++) { pkg = $i if (index(pkg, "\"") == 1) {pkg = substr(pkg, 2, length(pkg)-1)} if (index(pkg, "\"") > 1) {pkg = substr(pkg, 1, length(pkg)-1)} if ( system("pkg_info -e " pkg) == 1) { pkgs = pkgs " " pkg count++ } } if ( count ) { print "You need the following (build) perequisites:" print pkgs } else { print "All (build) prerequisites are present." } }' make pretty-print-run-depends-list | \ awk '{ count = 0 pkgs = "" for(i=5; i<=NF-2; i++) { pkg = $i if (index(pkg, "\"") == 1) {pkg = substr(pkg, 2, length(pkg)-1)} if (index(pkg, "\"") > 1) {pkg = substr(pkg, 1, length(pkg)-1)} if ( system("pkg_info -e " pkg) == 1) { pkgs = pkgs " " pkg count++ } } if ( count ) { print "You need the following (run) perequisites:" print pkgs } else { print "All (run) prerequisites are present." } }' -- Regards, Eric ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*) [Soln]
On Mon, Oct 03, 2005 at 11:55:28AM -0500, Eric Schuele wrote: > Hello, > > Some time back I posted a question regarding how to determine what > ports/packages would need to be installed on my machine when I install a > new (new to the local machine) port. > > For example, if I do not presently have openoffice installed... what > will get installed when I 'make install clean' it? Note that I want the > differences between what is needed to build/run the port and what is > already present on the machine. > > At the time no one responded with a clear way to do this... so I finally > had a few minutes to write a script to do it for me. I thought someone > else might find it useful... So I'm posting it here for comments and > thoughts (be gentle, I'm new to awk). Here is an improved/spoiled (decide by yourself) version. I aimed to sport a more orthogonal design and avoid some gotchas I run into (see comments in awk code). #! /bin/sh # Script to determine the differences between what is necessary for # a port, and what is already present on the local machine. awkprgt='{ count = 0 pkgs = "" for(i=5; i<=NF-2; i++) { pkg = $i # the "if" is here to hack it around when you get: # This port requires package(s) "" to build. if (pkg != "\"\"") { if (index(pkg, "\"") == 1) {pkg = substr(pkg, 2, length(pkg)-1)} if (index(pkg, "\"") > 1) {pkg = substr(pkg, 1, length(pkg)-1)} if ( system("pkg_info -e " pkg) == 1) { pkgs = pkgs " " pkg count++ } } } if ( count ) { print "You need the following (%s) perequisites:" print pkgs } else { print "All (%s) prerequisites are present." } } END { # triggered, eg., by audio/artswrapper (on my box, at least) if( ! FNR) { print "Bogus (empty) %s dependency information" } } ' awkit() { # Resolve "%s"-s via sed is a blunt hack # but good enough here and thus we don't have # to care about the number of occurrences awk "`echo "$awkprgt" | sed s/%s/$1/g`" } make pretty-print-build-depends-list | awkit build make pretty-print-run-depends-list | awkit run Alas... while I was making these changes, I succeeded to recall why I abandoned my earlier attempt to put together a script which fulfils this (highly desired) functionality. Because all such scripts are fundamentally broken. When make decides which ports to pull in, it doesn't only use the flat data of build and run dependencies, but uses its full Turing complete computing power. Eg., what happens when a port needs a postscript interpreter? Should it use the AFPL or the GNU edition as a dependency? Of course, doing a favor toward one of them (and taking away user's choice) is unacceptable. So what happens is that make directly checks whether the gs executable is present. See, for example, print/gv. Your script's output will include ghostscript-gnu-7.07_13 both as a build and a run dependency. Yet when I type make, my ghostscript-gnu-7.07_12 installation will be happily utilized as the following output snippet shows: => Checksum OK for gv-3.6.1.tar.gz. ===> Patching for gv-3.6.1 ===> Applying FreeBSD patches for gv-3.6.1 ===> gv-3.6.1 depends on executable: gmake - found ===> gv-3.6.1 depends on executable: gs - found ===> gv-3.6.1 depends on shared library: Xaw3d - found ===> gv-3.6.1 depends on shared library: X11.6 - found ===> Configuring for gv-3.6.1 The approach taken by FreeBSD's ports is to have more flexibility but less predictability, and now we have to live with it. Maybe the Gentoo guys are the ones who succeeded to find the proper balance between these two quantities -- they made up a mini-markup-language for denoting dependencies, which is clever enough to cover all cases but it's still just an easy to parse flat data. One solution for FreeBSD could be digging deep into the make backend of the ports framework and insert the necessary hooks everywhere to produce a reliable dry-run. Or severely refactor the whole ports framework and switch to Gentoo style dependency handling. This won't happen any soon IMHO as ports API changes should be pushed through all ports... (OFF: to have a bit of bitter laugh, I think Gentoo's portage suffers from a fundamental design flaw: they can't tune installation prefixes (which would be necessary to make it an acceptable cross platform 3rd party package manager, akin to pkgsrc, but it would have other uses, too). This is again such a thing which can be changed only by rewriting all of their e-builds.) Regards, Csaba ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To uns
Re: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*) [Soln]
Csaba Henk wrote: On Mon, Oct 03, 2005 at 11:55:28AM -0500, Eric Schuele wrote: Hello, Some time back I posted a question regarding how to determine what ports/packages would need to be installed on my machine when I install a new (new to the local machine) port. For example, if I do not presently have openoffice installed... what will get installed when I 'make install clean' it? Note that I want the differences between what is needed to build/run the port and what is already present on the machine. At the time no one responded with a clear way to do this... so I finally had a few minutes to write a script to do it for me. I thought someone else might find it useful... So I'm posting it here for comments and thoughts (be gentle, I'm new to awk). Here is an improved/spoiled (decide by yourself) version. Improved. I aimed to sport a more orthogonal design and avoid some gotchas I run into (see comments in awk code). #! /bin/sh # Script to determine the differences between what is necessary for # a port, and what is already present on the local machine. awkprgt='{ count = 0 pkgs = "" for(i=5; i<=NF-2; i++) { pkg = $i # the "if" is here to hack it around when you get: # This port requires package(s) "" to build. I never ran into this case. if (pkg != "\"\"") { if (index(pkg, "\"") == 1) {pkg = substr(pkg, 2, length(pkg)-1)} if (index(pkg, "\"") > 1) {pkg = substr(pkg, 1, length(pkg)-1)} if ( system("pkg_info -e " pkg) == 1) { pkgs = pkgs " " pkg count++ } } } if ( count ) { print "You need the following (%s) perequisites:" print pkgs } else { print "All (%s) prerequisites are present." } } I did see this on a few ports... but decided to handle it in the same fashion as `make pretty-print*`, for better or worse. My initial response was to do as you did (and I believe that IS the right thing)... but I fell back to what the make target did. But I prefer your soln. END { # triggered, eg., by audio/artswrapper (on my box, at least) if( ! FNR) { print "Bogus (empty) %s dependency information" } } ' awkit() { # Resolve "%s"-s via sed is a blunt hack # but good enough here and thus we don't have # to care about the number of occurrences awk "`echo "$awkprgt" | sed s/%s/$1/g`" } make pretty-print-build-depends-list | awkit build make pretty-print-run-depends-list | awkit run Alas... while I was making these changes, I succeeded to recall why I abandoned my earlier attempt to put together a script which fulfils this (highly desired) functionality. I highly desire this too... but my initial post (some months ago) received less attention than I expected. I find this functionality very useful, and was surprised solution didn't already exist. Because all such scripts are fundamentally broken. When make decides which ports to pull in, it doesn't only use the flat data of build and run dependencies, but uses its full Turing complete computing power. Eg., what happens when a port needs a postscript interpreter? Then do the pretty-print(s) not provide the useful information they appear to? I mean, If the above were true then they would have no value... and should go away. Or do they provide true but incomplete information? Should it use the AFPL or the GNU edition as a dependency? Of course, doing a favor toward one of them (and taking away user's choice) is unacceptable. So what happens is that make directly checks whether the gs executable is present. See, for example, print/gv. Your script's output will include ghostscript-gnu-7.07_13 both as a build and a run dependency. Yet when I type make, my ghostscript-gnu-7.07_12 installation will be happily utilized as the following output snippet shows: Is this not acceptable behavior since it is just a port revision? Shouldn't the revision be compatible in every way with the vendor's release? => Checksum OK for gv-3.6.1.tar.gz. ===> Patching for gv-3.6.1 ===> Applying FreeBSD patches for gv-3.6.1 ===> gv-3.6.1 depends on executable: gmake - found ===> gv-3.6.1 depends on executable: gs - found ===> gv-3.6.1 depends on shared library: Xaw3d - found ===> gv-3.6.1 depends on shared library: X11.6 - found ===> Configuring for gv-3.6.1 The approach taken by FreeBSD's ports is to have more flexibility but less predictability, and now we have to live with it. Maybe the Gentoo guys are the ones who succeeded to find the proper balance between these two quantities -- they made up a mini-markup-language for denoting dependencies, which is clever enough to cover all cases but it's still just an easy to parse flat
Re: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*) [Soln]
On Tue, Oct 04, 2005 at 11:19:03AM -0500, Eric Schuele wrote: > Csaba Henk wrote: > >Because all such scripts are fundamentally broken. > > > >When make decides which ports to pull in, it doesn't only use the flat > >data of build and run dependencies, but uses its full Turing complete > >computing power. Eg., what happens when a port needs a postscript > >interpreter? > > Then do the pretty-print(s) not provide the useful information they > appear to? I mean, If the above were true then they would have no > value... and should go away. Or do they provide true but incomplete > information? As far as I can see, they tell you the list of packages which would be installed if you were doing the install from scratch (ie., no packages were installed). This is a somewhat useful information, anyway. Btw., is make really Turing complete? As far as I can see, complex tasks are delegated to shell, but I can't recall seeing any "while" in make code... > >Should it use the AFPL or the GNU edition as a dependency? > >Of course, doing a favor toward one of them (and taking away user's > >choice) is unacceptable. So what happens is that make directly checks > >whether the gs executable is present. > > > >See, for example, print/gv. Your script's output will include > >ghostscript-gnu-7.07_13 both as a build and a run dependency. > >Yet when I type make, my ghostscript-gnu-7.07_12 installation will > >be happily utilized as the following output snippet shows: > > Is this not acceptable behavior since it is just a port revision? > Shouldn't the revision be compatible in every way with the vendor's release? What do you mean by this? The behaviour seen upon installing gv is absolutely what one would expect. It's just hard to make proper predictions. > Thanks for contributing to the script. You are welcome. Regards, Csaba ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
Re: Determining what a port will install... (more than pretty-print-*) [Soln]
Csaba Henk wrote: On Tue, Oct 04, 2005 at 11:19:03AM -0500, Eric Schuele wrote: Csaba Henk wrote: Because all such scripts are fundamentally broken. When make decides which ports to pull in, it doesn't only use the flat data of build and run dependencies, but uses its full Turing complete computing power. Eg., what happens when a port needs a postscript interpreter? Then do the pretty-print(s) not provide the useful information they appear to? I mean, If the above were true then they would have no value... and should go away. Or do they provide true but incomplete information? As far as I can see, they tell you the list of packages which would be installed if you were doing the install from scratch (ie., no packages were installed). This is a somewhat useful information, anyway. Btw., is make really Turing complete? As far as I can see, complex tasks are delegated to shell, but I can't recall seeing any "while" in make code... Should it use the AFPL or the GNU edition as a dependency? Of course, doing a favor toward one of them (and taking away user's choice) is unacceptable. So what happens is that make directly checks whether the gs executable is present. See, for example, print/gv. Your script's output will include ghostscript-gnu-7.07_13 both as a build and a run dependency. Yet when I type make, my ghostscript-gnu-7.07_12 installation will be happily utilized as the following output snippet shows: Is this not acceptable behavior since it is just a port revision? Shouldn't the revision be compatible in every way with the vendor's release? What do you mean by this? The behaviour seen upon installing gv is absolutely what one would expect. It's just hard to make proper predictions. It 'sounded' as if you were stating that it was inappropriate for the 7.07_12 port to be used in place of the 7.07_13 (which was required)... when this seemed correct to me. I'm sure I just misunderstood what you were saying... disregard my comment. Thanks for contributing to the script. You are welcome. Regards, Csaba -- Regards, Eric ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"