Is this just the way it is??

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 24 Jan 2020 13:22:36 -0500 (EST), Doug Denault wrote:
> 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.

Sidenote: FreeBSD version 11 is on its way to EOL. In case
you perform a new installation, you should probably use
version 12 (the latest release of that branch), except you
have a good reason to use older and (as it will become)
unsupported version.



> 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.

That indicates some problem. When you install something
via pkg, the dependencies _should_ be correct, i. e., if
a program requires Qt as a runtime dependency, and Qt is
not installed, it will install the exact version needed,
in your case, 5.13.2. In the package sources, the newest
version should be present anyway, and 5.13.0 numerically
is the older version.



> 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.

Yes, because all programs linked against the older version
will now have to be linked to the newer one.

What you see looks like a version mismatch of ports and
packages. An old problem. If you want to use both packaged
software _and_ your own compiled software, you need to make
sure that _before_ you start, you have the most recent ports
tree ("portsnap fetch extract").



> 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.

Exactly my observation. In my message "FreeBSD updating experience"
dated Thu, 19 Dec 2019 18:15:47 +0100, I wrote:

* quote *

If I install the Midnight Commander, both Python 2.7 and 3.6 get
installed, with several modules, each in the 2.7 and 3.6 version.

Some user-facing "normal" application (whose name I forgot) will
install gcc, even though no compiling takes place, and the program
itself is not related to any kind of programming. I think it was
something like pdftk that installed gcc and binutils, and wine
installs gcc9...

* end quote *

With software components _not_ conflicting, this surely is not
a problem, but as in your case, massive recompiling is definitely
annoying.



> 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??

No, yes, it depends. ;-)

Maybe (!) what you're seeing is due to the fact that you're
using FreeBSD 11 instead of 12, combined with a slight version
mismatch of ports tree and pkg source.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...