On Friday, July 23, 2004, 2:31:36 PM, Kenneth Porter wrote: > --On Saturday, July 24, 2004 9:22 AM +1200 Tom Munro Glass > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> What should you do on FreeBSD if you have already installed various perl >> modules by other methods, specifically using portinstall/portupgrade? >> Should those packages be removed with pkg_deinstall and then reinstalled >> using CPAN? > Do those utilities track installed packages and dependencies? What happens > if the distro upgrades something? (Esp. for critical security updates.) A > package that SA needed might get removed as part of the update, and SA > would be left with a missing dependency. This is the risk when you mix CPAN > and RPM. > The more fundamental problem is that multiple packaging systems keep > independent databases recording what's installed on the system. What's > needed is a way for CPAN to use the native package database to keep its > state. FreeBSD "ports" definitely track and resolve dependencies, and I assume "packages" do also. The main difference between ports and packages AFAIK is that ports grabs all sources and compiles from them, whereas packages grabs and installs precompiled binaries. So the problem of separately tracking installation databases stepping on each others' installs is a definite possibility if one tries to use both CPAN and ports/packages on the same FreeBSD system. FWIW Watching ports get installed under FreeBSD is similar to watching CPAN installations. Lots of fully automated updating of files and resolution of dependencies. Presumably Linux RPMs do likewise, but FreeBSD had it first, along with other goodies like the TCP stack.... :-) FWIW2 I'm by no means an expert sysadmin, so I'd appreciate any feedback on the above. Jeff C. -- Jeff Chan mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.surbl.org/
