I have a notebook with a couple of devices which require non-free
firmware. When I installed 5.0-release (amd64 from CD) it asked me if I
wanted those files downloaded on first boot; when I said YES it
proceeded to find and download them and everything 'just worked'.
(This was very convenient; my thanks to the developers who made it
happen.)
But when I upgraded to a 5.0-current snapshot (and later rebuilt from
source, most recently as of 9 January 2012) and then ran 'pkg_add -ui'
it was unable to update those files: "Couldn't find updates for
uvideo-firmware-1.2p0, iwn-firmware-5.6p0".
I'd expect that making 'pkg_add -u' able to find these files would be
fairly simple (either by giving it access to the same data used by the
installer or by recording where it was found with any package added from
a source not in PKG_PATH), and it would certainly make life a bit more
convenient when upgrading. Am I missing something important, is this on
someone's TODO list, do the installer and pkg_add developers not talk to
each other, or what?
Thanks in advance for any information.
Dave
PS: Before someone jumps all over me, I am _not_ demanding that anyone
drop everything and implement this immediately; I'd just like to
understand why this doesn't work and whether it's likely to start
working anytime soon. And I recognize "we've got more
urgent/important things to do" as a good reason for leaving this
alone. I haven't looked into the pkg_add source myself because it's
large, complicated and (especially) under active development.
--
Dave Anderson
<d...@daveanderson.com>
