Is this just the way it is??

[Doug Denault]

I recently undated my laptop and desktop to 11.3. The laptop around Thanksgiving 
and the Desktop in January. I came across an application to replace one that 
was changed in the 11-rel tree with no way to convert a database without the old 
version. Which programs really do not matter to my question.

On the desktop, the new package installed and just worked with no issues. It 
turns out this program can not be run on my desktop via an ssh tunnel. So I 
thought I would just install in on my laptop as I am 1,000+ miles away.

The package installed fine again no issues. When run however the package wants 
Qt5.13.2 and Qt5.13.0 was installed. Again fine, just compile the program. Oops 
no option to accept the installed Qt and the build failed anyway. Okay no 
program, just upgrade Qt5. It turns out doing that will upgrade firefox 
thunderbird, add a 3rd version of python and upgrade about 1/3 of the 550 
packages installed.

So is this just the way things are? Relative to python, I'm 99% sure 
python36-3.6.9_1 works just as well as python36-3.6.9_3 or python37-3.7.6. I 
thought (hoped??) the with recent change to package/ports would result them not 
being this tied to sub-sub version changes.

I'm just going for a yes or no. In the past you had a python 3 and 2.7 if you 
needed it. No so now I guess??

_____
Douglas Denault
http://www.safeport.com
doug at safeport.com
Voice: 301-217-9220
   Fax: 301-217-9277