portdeps

So why yet another ports update tool? My answer is simple: None of the existing tools fulfills my requirement for a straight-forward, easy-to-use updating tool. Some of the existing tools create databases that spill my disk (and perhaps get confused if I manually update a specific port), others require lots of user intervention, etc. I just wanted something that spits out the appropriate commands to update my ports, and that's it. I started with exploring the port dependencies, hence the name.

Here are the features of my portdeps script:

• Just requires a stock perl installation. Perl 5.8 or above recommended.
• Will essentially not do anything on its own. No fiddling with your ports tree, no wizardry in the background. It even won't create a single file. It will just emit the shell commands that are required to update your ports.
• Will take care of recursive port dependencies.
• Will not only check the port ${VERSION}_${REVISION},${EPOCH} of a port, but also verify that the build time of dependant ports is not newer.
• Unlike some other tools, does not rely on +REQUIRED_BY but rather uses make to elaborate on port dependencies in the current ports tree.
• Runs a single make for each port and internally stores the information gained from that make. Yes, this still does take time but gives most accurate update information with minimum effort.
• Doesn't care about BUILD_DEPENDS, but only about RUN_DEPENDS, LIB_DEPENDS, and DEPENDS. I know that other packages do it differently but for me this appears to be the Right Thing.

In practice you would just run

portdeps

and receive this output:

# security/ipsec-tools needs updating: installed ipsec-tools-0.6.4_1, in ports ipsec-tools-0.6.4_2
# textproc/expat2 needs updating: installed expat-1.95.8_3, in ports expat-2.0.0
# www/apache13 needs updating: installed apache-1.3.34_3, in ports apache-1.3.34_4
# devel/gmake needs updating: devel/gettext is more recent than devel/gmake
# ftp/wget needs updating: devel/gettext is more recent than ftp/wget
make -C /usr/ports/security/ipsec-tools all deinstall install clean &&
make -C /usr/ports/textproc/expat2 all deinstall install clean &&
make -C /usr/ports/ftp/wget all deinstall install clean &&
make -C /usr/ports/devel/gmake all deinstall install clean &&
 make -C /usr/ports/security/rkhunter all deinstall install clean &&
 make -C /usr/ports/www/apache13 all deinstall install clean &&
  make -C /usr/ports/hmo/apache-contrib-mod_urlcount all deinstall install clean &&
true

Then check this output, and either cut-and-paste this into a shell window, or feed it into a pipe:

portdeps | sh

That's the whole story. Simple and stupid, but very effective and handy.

Ah, there's a downside: This is hard-core perl. Zero documentation apart from the source.

Just drop me a mail if you have suggestions. Please keep in mind that this is intended as a simple, handy tool rather than a full-featured package with lots of knobs.

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