Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-28 Thread perryh
Mike Clarke jmc-freeb...@milibyte.co.uk wrote:
 On Monday 27 September 2010, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
  I've recently started on a new system, and am planning to
  install 8.1-RELEASE, including the corresponding ports tree;
  then install what ports I can from packages and also fetch the
  corresponding distfiles; and finally build -- from release-
  corresponding ports -- any that aren't available as packages or
  where I want non-default OPTION settings.  That approach should
  avoid most nasty surprises while getting things set up and
  working.  _After_ everything is installed and configured
  properly will be plenty soon enough to consider whether any
  ports need to be updated -- and the already-installed-and-
  working package collection will provide a fallback in case
  of trouble trying to build any updated versions.

 The problem is if/when you need to update a port as a result of
 a security advisory. If your ports tree is very much out of date
 then it's likely that updating that one port will require a number
 of dependencies to be updated as well, sometimes all the ports
 depending on one or more of the updated dependencies need to be
 updated as well and the resultant bag of worms can take quite a
 lot of sorting out.  The little and often approach of keeping
 the ports tree up to date could be less traumatic.

and, in this context, your point is?

I'm advocating starting from a stable and self-consistent baseline,
consisting of a release _and_ its corresponding port/package
collection, and then considering whether any updates are needed.
Isn't that orthogonal to the question of whether or not to follow
ports updates, once the baseline has been established?
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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-28 Thread Ryan Coleman

On Sep 28, 2010, at 2:02 AM, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:

 Mike Clarke jmc-freeb...@milibyte.co.uk wrote:
 On Monday 27 September 2010, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
 I've recently started on a new system, and am planning to
 install 8.1-RELEASE, including the corresponding ports tree;
 then install what ports I can from packages and also fetch the
 corresponding distfiles; and finally build -- from release-
 corresponding ports -- any that aren't available as packages or
 where I want non-default OPTION settings.  That approach should
 avoid most nasty surprises while getting things set up and
 working.  _After_ everything is installed and configured
 properly will be plenty soon enough to consider whether any
 ports need to be updated -- and the already-installed-and-
 working package collection will provide a fallback in case
 of trouble trying to build any updated versions.
 
 The problem is if/when you need to update a port as a result of
 a security advisory. If your ports tree is very much out of date
 then it's likely that updating that one port will require a number
 of dependencies to be updated as well, sometimes all the ports
 depending on one or more of the updated dependencies need to be
 updated as well and the resultant bag of worms can take quite a
 lot of sorting out.  The little and often approach of keeping
 the ports tree up to date could be less traumatic.
 
 and, in this context, your point is?
 
 I'm advocating starting from a stable and self-consistent baseline,
 consisting of a release _and_ its corresponding port/package
 collection, and then considering whether any updates are needed.
 Isn't that orthogonal to the question of whether or not to follow
 ports updates, once the baseline has been established?

As I understand it: The OS itself is stable, but the ports are constantly in 
flux and may be issues.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-28 Thread Polytropon
On Tue, 28 Sep 2010 02:24:26 -0500, Ryan Coleman ryan.cole...@cwis.biz wrote:
 As I understand it: The OS itself is stable, but the ports are
 constantly in flux and may be issues.

Not exactly. It depends on which update road you follow.

Say, you use freebsd-update (the binary update), or use c(v)sup
to track -RELEASE (including the security patches), your OS is
stable. Certain points in time can be addressed by a specific
patch level, e. g. -RELEASE-p1 for the first one, -RELEASE-p2
for the second one, and so on.

If you track -STABLE by using c(v)sup (doesn't work with the
binary freebsd-update!), your OS is also stable. There is no
further versioning as with the patch levels; the date decides.
As you can't binary upgrade here, compiling yourself is needed.

But if you track -CURRENT (means -HEAD), it *might* be that the
OS won't even compile, or runs unstable. This is due to the fact
that *this* branch does sometimes include experimental changes
or features that are tested, and maybe removed later on. It's
obvious that you need to retrieve the sources and compile your-
self in this case, too.

Ports, on the other hand, are not related to the OS version. If
you use -RELEASE for example, you can, if it fits your needs,
stay with the default ports tree that has been issued the same
time the release came out. This is the state you'll find on the
installation media. You can also use the precompiled packages.

If you decide to upgrade your ports tree because you need newer
versions or specific features, it *may* be possible that a certain
point in time of -RELEASE is not sufficient, and this might force
you to change your road to follow -STABLE. This can either be the
case by installing from an updated ports tree or from Latest/
packages (instead of RELEASE one's).

Summary: -RELEASE and -STABLE are stable, -CURRENT or -HEAD do not
neccessarily have to be.





-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-28 Thread Michel Talon
Polytropon said:

 If you decide to upgrade your ports tree because you need newer
 versions or specific features, it *may* be possible that a certain
 point in time of -RELEASE is not sufficient, and this might force
 you to change your road to follow -STABLE. This can either be the
 case by installing from an updated ports tree or from Latest/
 packages (instead of RELEASE one's).

An other option is to download a specific port from (*)
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/
and compiling it independently of the ports tree. In many cases it works 
perfectly OK and avoids to upgrade the ports tree itself and the 
destabilization which ensues. Of course you can also upgrade
frequently the ports tree and run frequently portupgrade or portmaster,
if you like tinkering with your machine.


(*) in any given port you will find
Download this directory in tarball

-- 

Michel TALON

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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-28 Thread Chris Whitehouse

per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:


I'm advocating starting from a stable and self-consistent baseline,
consisting of a release _and_ its corresponding port/package
collection, and then considering whether any updates are needed.


You might be interested to follow Manolis' custom DVD which is based on 
exactly that principle:


http://freebsd-custom.wikidot.com

Chris


Isn't that orthogonal to the question of whether or not to follow
ports updates, once the baseline has been established?
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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-28 Thread Warren Block

On Tue, 28 Sep 2010, Ryan Coleman wrote:


As I understand it: The OS itself is stable, but the ports are constantly in 
flux and may be issues.


During a FreeBSD release, the ports tree is frozen and port updates 
are delayed.  So a FreeBSD release really does come with with a somewhat 
stale and stable set of ports... which is immediately followed by a 
flurry of port updates as the ports tree is unfrozen.  Often these 
updates include major applications like xorg, with time-consuming 
upgrade procedures.


The snapshot of ports on a -release grows increasingly stale.  After a 
while, it's easier to update the ports tree before installing anything.

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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-28 Thread Ian Smith
In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 330, Issue 2, Message: 22
On Tue, 28 Sep 2010 00:02:29 -0700 per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
  Mike Clarke jmc-freeb...@milibyte.co.uk wrote:
   On Monday 27 September 2010, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
I've recently started on a new system, and am planning to
install 8.1-RELEASE, including the corresponding ports tree;
then install what ports I can from packages and also fetch the
corresponding distfiles; and finally build -- from release-
corresponding ports -- any that aren't available as packages or
where I want non-default OPTION settings.  That approach should
avoid most nasty surprises while getting things set up and
working.  _After_ everything is installed and configured
properly will be plenty soon enough to consider whether any
ports need to be updated -- and the already-installed-and-
working package collection will provide a fallback in case
of trouble trying to build any updated versions.
  
   The problem is if/when you need to update a port as a result of
   a security advisory. If your ports tree is very much out of date
   then it's likely that updating that one port will require a number
   of dependencies to be updated as well, sometimes all the ports
   depending on one or more of the updated dependencies need to be
   updated as well and the resultant bag of worms can take quite a
   lot of sorting out.  The little and often approach of keeping
   the ports tree up to date could be less traumatic.
  
  and, in this context, your point is?
  
  I'm advocating starting from a stable and self-consistent baseline,
  consisting of a release _and_ its corresponding port/package
  collection, and then considering whether any updates are needed.
  Isn't that orthogonal to the question of whether or not to follow
  ports updates, once the baseline has been established?

Makes sense to me.  There's been a ports freeze and extra attention to 
consistency of dependencies leading up to a -RELEASE, so there's a much 
better chance of all your ports working together from the outset, then 
you can update them at leisure while still getting on with some work!

That there's also a self-consistent complete set of packages at that 
point seems lost on some folks having good enough bandwidth and fast 
enough systems to never need bothering with packages.

I agree with Mike about the worms :)  I have an 8.0-RELEASE system with 
many ports installed and quite a few configured to taste with a recently 
upgraded 8-STABLE world, working through a huge portversion update list, 
started by fetching over 900MB of packages so far including X and KDE by 
portupgrade -aFPP.  It's going to take a while, and I'll be surprised if 
I don't skin a few knuckles on circular dependencies along the way.

cheers, Ian
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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-28 Thread Mike Clarke
On Tuesday 28 September 2010, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:

 Mike Clarke jmc-freeb...@milibyte.co.uk wrote:

[snip]

  The problem is if/when you need to update a port as a result of
  a security advisory. If your ports tree is very much out of date
  then it's likely that updating that one port will require a number
  of dependencies to be updated as well, sometimes all the ports
  depending on one or more of the updated dependencies need to be
  updated as well and the resultant bag of worms can take quite a
  lot of sorting out.  The little and often approach of keeping
  the ports tree up to date could be less traumatic.

 and, in this context, your point is?

 I'm advocating starting from a stable and self-consistent baseline,
 consisting of a release _and_ its corresponding port/package
 collection, and then considering whether any updates are needed.
 Isn't that orthogonal to the question of whether or not to follow
 ports updates, once the baseline has been established?
 ___

Well I'd normally happy to stay with the original release state without 
having to have the latest  greatest version of each application but 
I prefer to update any ports which have been flagged by portaudit as 
having security vulnerabilities and this is when the problem could 
arise. Updating a single port in isolation without updating the ports 
tree can lead to problems with dependencies so you invariably need to 
update your ports tree and update the dependencies for the port in 
question.

If, for example, you were to build a web server by installing 
8.1-RELEASE and the matching package for apache you would have 
apache-2.2.15_9 which suffers from a remote DoS bug and should be 
upgraded to 2.2.16 http://www.vuxml.org/freebsd/CVE-2010-1452.html. 
As Warren Block has pointed out elsewhere in this thread there's 
usually a flurry of port updates when the ports tree is unfrozen just 
after a release so if you now update the ports tree and upgrade your 
ports there could be a large number of ports to upgrade, most of them 
can be upgraded quite painlessly with portmaster or portupgrade but 
you'd need to check /usr/ports/UPDATING to see if any of them needed 
special attention, fixing a single special case is usually quite 
straightforward but things sometimes get more complex when there's 
several. If on the other hand you installed the base system, updated 
your ports tree and then built what you needed from ports (or the 
latest packages) you'd get the latest versions without having to sort 
out any conflicts. If you wait a long time before a new vulnerability 
pushes you into doing your next upgrade then you'll still probably have 
quite a lot to sort out but updating small numbers of ports more 
frequently usually involves less work than an occasional mega upgrade.

Well, that's just my 2 cents worth and it does depend on how many ports 
you have. A minimal server setup with few ports will probably not need 
very frequent port upgrades but something like a desktop could easily 
have 700 or more ports and it can be quite messy to upgrade your ports 
if it's been a long time since the last upgrade.

-- 
Mike Clarke
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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-28 Thread Mike Clarke
On Tuesday 28 September 2010, Ian Smith wrote:

 I agree with Mike about the worms :)  I have an 8.0-RELEASE system
 with many ports installed and quite a few configured to taste with a
 recently upgraded 8-STABLE world, working through a huge portversion
 update list, started by fetching over 900MB of packages so far
 including X and KDE by portupgrade -aFPP.  It's going to take a
 while, and I'll be surprised if I don't skin a few knuckles on
 circular dependencies along the way.

I used to use packages in preference to ports but, being on a PAYG 
broadband account rather than unlimited, I'm more concerned about 
bandwidth than compile time. I found that upgrading ports often 
involved just a few packages which had actually been changed while the 
rest just had their version number bumped as a result of dependencies 
but still needed the entire package to be downloaded. Switching to 
building the ports instead means that I usually only need to download a 
relatively small number of distfiles with the remaining ports being 
recompiled from my existing collection of distfiles using the new 
makefiles in the updated ports tree.

-- 
Mike Clarke
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Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-28 Thread victor kovacs



Mouse works in text mode in root and personal directories.

Does not work in KDE graphics after startx is typed in personal directory.

Graphics comes up normally.

Using a ps2 mouse.

Any suggestions?

Regards,

victor

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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-28 Thread Polytropon
On Tue, 28 Sep 2010 21:20:49 -0400, victor kovacs slowp...@pathcom.com wrote:
 
 
 Mouse works in text mode in root and personal directories.
 
 Does not work in KDE graphics after startx is typed in personal directory.
 
 Graphics comes up normally.
 
 Using a ps2 mouse.
 
 Any suggestions?

Check the mail archives related to using X with or without HAL
and DBUS (depends on the setting you are using). When your
mouse works in text mode, moused has correctly picked it up,
so the problem seems to be on X's side.

Check X configuration file /etc/X11/xorg.conf if you have any.

Check your HAL and DBUS stuff.
a) Want to use HAL and DBUS?
Enable them in /etc/rc.conf
b) Do not want to use HAL and DBUS?
Modify xorg.conf's AutoAddDevice setting.

You'll find more information about this in the mailing list
archives and the FreeBSD handbook.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-27 Thread perryh
Matthew Seaman m.sea...@infracaninophile.co.uk wrote:
 On 26/09/2010 13:30:19, Michel Talon wrote:
  Matthew Seaman said
  Be aware that installing the ports tree from the DVD images
  is not the ideal way to do it ... it is better to ... grab
  an up-to-date copy of the ports directly from the net.
  
  I disagree with that ...  Another option is to install
  the ports tree from the  DVD,and install corresponding
  precompiled packages ... and *not* updating the ports
  tree ...

I suspect the best results can be had from an approach in between
these; details below.

 ... being up-to-date with the ports tree generally *does*
 give you better results than not.

 Ports are a moving target, dependent entirely on upstream changes.

This last is an oversimplification.  Not all ports even _have_ an
upstream, and those that do (granted, the great majority) depend
not only on upstream changes but also on the maintainer's and
committers' ability to keep up with those changes.

 Expecting that a snapshot taken months or weeks ago will work
 just as well as one updated in the last hour is plain daft ...
 ported software generally does improve over time.  Updates that
 fix problems are way more common that updates that introduce them
 ...

Couldn't this as well be said of FreeBSD itself?  If it were
universally accepted, there would be no need for the stable
or security branches and the considerable effort that goes
into maintaining them:  everyone would just run -CURRENT.

One _huge_ advantage of starting with a release _and its
corresponding set of ports  packages_ is that everything
is self-consistent.  This tends not to be true of snapshots
taken between releases, if only because no one has time to
do that much release engineering for every update of every
port.

I tried to follow the OP's approach a few years ago, and got
burned rather badly.  By the time I had the system working
well enough to start on the project I had intended to work on,
the time budgeted for the setup _and_ the work had been almost
entirely consumed in setup!  I get the impression that M. Talon
may have had similar experiences.

I've recently started on a new system, and am planning to install
8.1-RELEASE, including the corresponding ports tree; then install
what ports I can from packages and also fetch the corresponding
distfiles; and finally build -- from release-corresponding ports --
any that aren't available as packages or where I want non-default
OPTION settings.  That approach should avoid most nasty surprises
while getting things set up and working.  _After_ everything is
installed and configured properly will be plenty soon enough to
consider whether any ports need to be updated -- and the already-
installed-and-working package collection will provide a fallback
in case of trouble trying to build any updated versions.
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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-27 Thread Mike Clarke
On Monday 27 September 2010, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:

 I've recently started on a new system, and am planning to install
 8.1-RELEASE, including the corresponding ports tree; then install
 what ports I can from packages and also fetch the corresponding
 distfiles; and finally build -- from release-corresponding ports --
 any that aren't available as packages or where I want non-default
 OPTION settings.  That approach should avoid most nasty surprises
 while getting things set up and working.  _After_ everything is
 installed and configured properly will be plenty soon enough to
 consider whether any ports need to be updated -- and the already-
 installed-and-working package collection will provide a fallback
 in case of trouble trying to build any updated versions.

The problem is if/when you need to update a port as a result of a 
security advisory. If your ports tree is very much out of date then 
it's likely that updating that one port will require a number of 
dependencies to be updated as well, sometimes all the ports depending 
on one or more of the updated dependencies need to be updated as well 
and the resultant bag of worms can take quite a lot of sorting out. 
The little and often approach of keeping the ports tree up to date 
could be less traumatic.

-- 
Mike Clarke
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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-27 Thread Chip Camden
Quoth Mike Clarke on Monday, 27 September 2010:
 On Monday 27 September 2010, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
 
  I've recently started on a new system, and am planning to install
  8.1-RELEASE, including the corresponding ports tree; then install
  what ports I can from packages and also fetch the corresponding
  distfiles; and finally build -- from release-corresponding ports --
  any that aren't available as packages or where I want non-default
  OPTION settings.  That approach should avoid most nasty surprises
  while getting things set up and working.  _After_ everything is
  installed and configured properly will be plenty soon enough to
  consider whether any ports need to be updated -- and the already-
  installed-and-working package collection will provide a fallback
  in case of trouble trying to build any updated versions.
 
 The problem is if/when you need to update a port as a result of a 
 security advisory. If your ports tree is very much out of date then 
 it's likely that updating that one port will require a number of 
 dependencies to be updated as well, sometimes all the ports depending 
 on one or more of the updated dependencies need to be updated as well 
 and the resultant bag of worms can take quite a lot of sorting out. 
 The little and often approach of keeping the ports tree up to date 
 could be less traumatic.
 
 -- 
 Mike Clarke

That's the maxim under which I operate.  Furthermore, if something does
break, it's a lot easier to narrow down what broke it if you updated one
or two ports instead of twenty or thirty.

I use the same principle in following STABLE -- frequently update/build so if
anything goes wrong, the number of culpable commits is small.

-- 
Sterling (Chip) Camden| sterl...@camdensoftware.com | 2048D/3A978E4F
http://camdensoftware.com | http://chipstips.com| http://chipsquips.com


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Description: PGP signature


Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-26 Thread victor kovacs


It appears that all the distfile locations are empty.

For example: KDE4

Master site: empty

Distfiles: none

Extract-only: empty


Have the distfiles for the GUI been left out of the dvd?

Same situation when 32 or 64 side of dvd is loaded.

The dvd disk reader is read only. It cannot write to disk.

Please advise

Victor
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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-26 Thread Matthew Seaman
On 26/09/2010 02:50:55, victor kovacs wrote:
 
 It appears that all the distfile locations are empty.
 
 For example: KDE4
 
 Master site: empty
 
 Distfiles: none
 
 Extract-only: empty
 

That's deliberate.  x11/kde4 is a metaport -- that is, it installs
nothing itself, but exists only to hold dependencies on other KDE4
components.  Installing x11/kde4 will trigger a cascading installation
of the 20-odd other ports (as modified by your choice of options) that
go to create a whole KDE system.

 Have the distfiles for the GUI been left out of the dvd?
 
 Same situation when 32 or 64 side of dvd is loaded.
 
 The dvd disk reader is read only. It cannot write to disk.

No -- the tarball of the ports in the distribution media is a faithful
copy of the state of the ports tree at the time the media were created.

Distfiles aren't included in FreeBSD DVD images -- there's only about
4.5GB to play with, and most of that is taken up by FreeBSD itself, and
a selection of the most important software pre-compiled in pkg format.

All of the distfiles or all of the pkgs for all of the ports together
are substantially larger than any single piece of distribution medium
(disk, USB key, etc.) readily available at the moment.  Even just
selecting the most commonly installed applications easily overflows the
capacity of the DVD (and consider what invidious choices that selection
process involves).

Be aware that installing the ports tree from the DVD images is not the
ideal way to do it.  If you have the connectivity on your newly
installed system, it is better to use either csup(1) or portsnap(1) to
grab an up-to-date copy of the ports directly from the net.

Cheers,

Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.   7 Priory Courtyard
  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
JID: matt...@infracaninophile.co.uk   Kent, CT11 9PW



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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-26 Thread Michel Talon
Matthew Seaman said

 Be aware that installing the ports tree from the DVD images is not the
 ideal way to do it.  If you have the connectivity on your newly
 installed system, it is better to use either csup(1) or portsnap(1) to
 grab an up-to-date copy of the ports directly from the net.

I disagree with that. You are supposing that newer is better, which is
far from proven (in fact blatantly false in many cases). Another option
is to install the ports tree from the  DVD,and install corresponding
precompiled packages from the DVD or otherwise the web, and
*not* updating the ports tree. There is a lot to be said for this
option, and many users will be happier doing that, at least people who
want to use their machine and not spend their time upgrading, compiling
and fighting bugs.

-- 

Michel TALON

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Re: Free BSD 8.1

2010-09-26 Thread Matthew Seaman
On 26/09/2010 13:30:19, Michel Talon wrote:
 Matthew Seaman said
 
 Be aware that installing the ports tree from the DVD images is not the
 ideal way to do it.  If you have the connectivity on your newly
 installed system, it is better to use either csup(1) or portsnap(1) to
 grab an up-to-date copy of the ports directly from the net.
 
 I disagree with that. You are supposing that newer is better, which is
 far from proven (in fact blatantly false in many cases). Another option
 is to install the ports tree from the  DVD,and install corresponding
 precompiled packages from the DVD or otherwise the web, and
 *not* updating the ports tree. There is a lot to be said for this
 option, and many users will be happier doing that, at least people who
 want to use their machine and not spend their time upgrading, compiling
 and fighting bugs.
 

No.  I made no comment on the relative advantages and disadvantages of
various updating strategies.  Please do not put words into my mouth.
Given that the OP asked about the ports I think it fairly safe to assume
that his intention was to use them.

And, yes, being up-to-date with the ports tree generally *does* give you
better results than not.  Ports are a moving target, dependent entirely
on upstream changes.  Expecting that a snapshot taken months or weeks
ago will work just as well as one updated in the last hour is plain
daft.  Even without any functional changes to the ported software,
projects still move to different hosting, URLs change as archive sites
are internally reorganised, ftp servers come and go, dist files get
re-rolled with new checksums.

Aside from those neutral changes, ported software generally does improve
over time.  Updates that fix problems are way more common that updates
that introduce them.  Despite a few high-profile occasions when things
have gone horribly wrong -- not just with the ports, but with any OSS
project --- this is overwhelmingly the case.  The quality control in the
majority of large OSS projects is very good nowadays -- probably better
than their closed source equivalents.  End users can quite reasonably
expect not to have to spend their time fighting bugs.
Newer generally /is/ better.

Besides that, the assumption you are making, that change is undesirable,
is just plain wrong.  People will always want new stuff.  It may not be
wise for them to get it, but that's another story.

Cheers,

Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.   7 Priory Courtyard
  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
JID: matt...@infracaninophile.co.uk   Kent, CT11 9PW



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