FreeBSD Ports and "make search"
Performing a CVSup update to the ports collection is easy enough, but what about its "make search" feature? Try it. Update your out-of-date ports tree using cvsup, and then do a:
...where "blah" is a port you are certain has been updated. Compare the version number that comes back with the version information in the port's directory. They're different!
I posed this question to Bryan, a FreeBSD guru and longtime friend of mine. Here is his response, which was right on the money:
make search (which I admit I haven't actually used before, but it's interesting) uses /usr/ports/INDEX (or /usr/ports/INDEX-5 on 5.x) to search, and I don't think that's updated when you cvsup. Check the timestamps.
If that's the problem, you can either generate the INDEX(-5) using 'make index' in /usr/ports, which generates it based on your ports tree (and takes a loooong time unless you have a fast machine), or you can use 'make fetchindex' to grab the latest one from the FreeBSD FTP sites.
The way I actually have my ports updates setup is to do a (cd /usr/ports; make update fetchindex) in a crontab. 'make update' does the cvsup step. To do this you need some supporting make settings in /etc/make.conf, mine are as follows:
# port update options
SUP_UPDATE= yes
SUP= /usr/local/bin/cvsup
SUPFLAGS= -g -L 2
SUPHOST= admin.back.samurai.com
PORTSSUPFILE= /usr/sup/ports-supfile
FETCHINDEX= fetch -amq
Some of these settings override whatever is in the supfile you're using. The last line makes the fetchindex not output transfer info, so it's nicely quiet for a cron entry.
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