Re: Proposal: make portsnap generate INDEX-${OSREL:R} only by default

On 08/07/15 05:11, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> Isn't rebuilding the index useful for people running STABLE? I assume that
> I need a current index to get useful output from "pkg version -vL=". I am
> probably a bit unusual in that I keep a current ports tre on a STABLE
> system, but there are a couple of ports that I need to build due to custom
> options and I find poudriere overkill for this case. I suspect many people
> running STABLE may use portsnap and build everything from ports. (This use
> to be common fairly recently and likely still is.)

Actually 'pkg version -vL=' uses one of three different methods to get
information about available port/pkg versions:

    * by reading the INDEX (if it exists).
    * failing that, by running 'make -V PKGNAME' (or similar) but only
      if there's a ports tree on the system.  This is horribly slow.
    * failing that, by using the repository catalogue.

So it will cope without an INDEX file if it has to -- that's unless you
use any of the -I, -P or -R flags to tell it exactly what to do.

Of course, if you're using custom options, then the ports tree you
download from portsnap won't necessarily be accurate for your setup
anyhow.  The good news is that it really doesn't have to be.  Pretty
much everything I've run across in dealing with building software out of
the ports will work fine without an index or with an incorrect index.
Maybe a bit slower than otherwise, but frequently it makes no difference.

	Cheers,

	Matthew