Tyler Retzlaff wrote:

> Maybe something like a make safeupdate target would be acceptable.   
> It would differ in that it would pkg_tarup all the packages before  
> removing them and if the update failed put everything back into place.
> 
> No I do not know what I'm proposing, nor do I know if it would be  
> difficult at all it was just a random thought.

Assumptions for comment below: make replace builds and installs a
single package.  I've never used it, so I'm guessing that is the
case.  I have run make update and lost half my packages multiple
times, so I don't need to assume as much about that.

Another alternative might be a target that builds a list of packages
to update like make update does, but builds and installs each
package on the list with make replace, and issues a warning about
all possible broken dependent packages that were not replaced when
one of the builds fails.

i.e with package dependencies a -> b -> c -> d, doing make replace
on package a would actually do "cd a; make replace;cd b;make
replace;cd c;make replace..." and if package b didn't build, you'd
get a new package a, and error for package b, and a warning that
packages c and d were not built because the build for b failed.

Of course, I've only make a few packages, never made any changes to
the pkgsrc/mk/* files, so that idea is probably only worth the same
as the volume of warm air describing it caused.

Jon