Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 20 Dec 2003 12:34:45 -0500
From:      "fbsd_user" <fbsd_user@a1poweruser.com>
To:        "freebsd-questions@FreeBSD. ORG" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   problem with pkg_add  'latest' category 
Message-ID:  <MIEPLLIBMLEEABPDBIEGMEEJFBAA.fbsd_user@a1poweruser.com>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Pkg_add  uses this default path
/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4.9-release/Latest/


The 'Latest' directory is an unpublished category and contains all
the package versions of the ports collection as an massive list of
all 9,600 ports. The names in this list do not match the spelling of
the true package names and they look like they are really link
files.

/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4.9-release/

contains all the packages categories and the names in each category
are the true spelling of the port names with the version as part of
the name, and is really the package version. These also look like
link files, but at least the names match the names pointed to by
http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html.  The FBSD handbook says to
use this web page to search the ports collection to find the
category and name of the port you want to select for installing, but
if you use that name in the pkg_add -rv xxxxxxxxxxx it is not found.
Of course it's not found because pkg_add defaults to 'latest'
category which has all different spelling of the names. No wonder
people have so much trouble using the package collection when there
is no way to find the correct spelling of the name. This is an built
in incentive to force users to use the cvsup ports collection and
all it's inherent waste of disk space and bandwidth, which the
package collection is suppose to correct.


Why is the 'latest' category populated with bogus names when the
correct names are all ready present in the other categories
surrounding it? This is not unique to just one ftp site but to all
ftp sites ftp1 - ftp14.

The simplest solution is to populate the 'latest' category with the
correct spelling of the names, Or better yet get rid of the latest
category and change the pkg_add program to default to using
/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4.9-release/ and change the format
of the
pkg_add command to pkg_add -r /catorgy/full.port.name.

Before I submit bug report, I want to get users comments on this
subject in case I have missed something in my research.

Thanks
Joe













Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?MIEPLLIBMLEEABPDBIEGMEEJFBAA.fbsd_user>