Re: make update failing with "a different version ... is already installed"

[Andreas Gustafsson <gson%gson.org@localhost>]

Greg Troxel wrote:
> > When I try to update a package with "make update", more often than not
> > it fails, complaining that one of the dependencies of the package has
> > a different version already installed.  For example, I just tried to
> > do a "make update" in /usr/pkgsrc/databases/pgadmin3, and got:
> >
> >   => Full dependency postgresql84-client>=8.4.8: NOT found
> >   => Verifying package-install for ../../databases/postgresql84-client
> >   => Bootstrap dependency digest>=20010302: found digest-20080510
> >   ===> Checking for vulnerabilities in postgresql84-client-8.4.8
> >   ===> Install binary package of postgresql84-client-8.4.8
> >   pkg_add: A different version of postgresql84-client-8.4.8 is already
> > installed: postgresql84-client-8.4.2nb1
> >   pkg_add: 1 package addition failed
> >   *** Error code 1
> >
> > What am I doing wrong?
> 
> Basically, if you don't update everything to consistent versions (from
> the same time in pkgsrc), I think you're going to have trouble.

What do you mean by "everything" - every installed package, or just
those having a dependency relationship (directly or indirectly) with
the one I'm trying to update?  I don't see how unrelated packages
could cause the problem I'm seeing, and with regards to related
packages, isn't updating those to consistent versions exactly what
"make update" is supposed to do?

> There seem to be two camps:
> 
>   A) use pkg_rolling-replace
> 
>   B) do a bulk build of some flavor (with pkg_chk to control it, perhaps)
>   to get a consistent/pure set of binary packages for what you want, and
>   then pkg_delete all the stuff that doesn't fit and install the new
>   ones (perhaps via pkg_chk)

The only method of updating packages I see mentioned in the pkgsrc
guide is "make update"; if you are not supposed to use that, the guide
needs to be updated.  If we don't have a working method of updating a
package (or all of them) that users can find in the guide, that's a
pretty sad state of affairs.

> In your case, postgresql84-client was updated in pkgsrc but your system
> wasn't updated, and there's a dependency on a specific version for some
> reason. I am not clear on whether this is a bug in make update (that it
> didn't update postgresql84-client)

"make update" did _try_ to update postgresql84-client - it was
successfully built and packaged as a binary package, but then failed
to install because a different version was already installed.  This
does seem like a bug in "make update" to me.

> In your case, you could go into databases/postgresql84-client and 'make
> replace', but I don't know how that left your 'make update'.

I'm reluctant to use "make replace" since the documentation says
"there are no guarantees that dependent packages will still work" when
you do that.  Going into databases/postgresql84-client, doing a "make
update" there, and resuming the original "make update" did work, but
if you are updating a package like graphics/png, you end up having to
perform this work-around many times.
-- 
Andreas Gustafsson, gson%gson.org@localhost