Re: Synth status and failure to install some packages

On Tue, 1 Jun 2021 at 15:50, Thomas Mueller <mueller6722@twc.com> wrote:
>
> > synth only upgrades existing packages that are on your system, and
> > makes no assumptions about what the user wants. If you need a tool,
> > you'll have to install it - at which point it becomes a first-class
> > installed module (as opposed to those that can be auto-removed), and
> > synth will upgrade them as required.
>
> Install using synth, or some other way?

Installed via synth or pkg. synth uses pkg(8) when it installs software.

The thing to remember is that poudriere and synth are _repository_
builders. pkg(8) is the actual installation tool that consults the
newly built package repository to install the software.

> > This is useful for some of my systems where I don't need the
> > build-tools, only the end-result package.
>
> > Cheers.
>
> > Jonathan Chen <jonc@chen.org.nz>
>
> I would likely want to build the packages on a different partition so as to keep my present outdated installation intact and not lose everything if rebuilding messes up.
>
> This new partition now has an old 13-current or 12-stable from May 2019, internet connectivity not functional, which I would upgrade to 14-current, or less likely, 13-stable.
>
> If the upgrade build fails, or if internet connectivity is still nonfunctional, then back to NetBSD.
>
> I could use pkg query (is that it?) to make a list of all installed packages and use that with synth, but have had instances of packages named on the synth command line building but not installing.

I can't say that's happened with me, the only time synth fails to
install is when there's a build-problem, an INDEX problem, or a
conflict issue; however, these are all problems originating with the
ports-tree rather than synth.

Cheers.
-- 
Jonathan Chen <jonc@chen.org.nz>