# portmaster vs portupgrade



## achix (Dec 23, 2011)

I know this has been beaten up to death in various forums/lists, but I'd like to share my experiences after my last upgrade (which led to a brand new shining box). portmaster(8) rocks. It makes things look (and be) much simpler than portupgrade(8). I admit, as day(s) passed by with trying the portupgrade way (without success), the thought of going Debian got into me, as time was running short, and I am afraid that hadn't I tried portmaster, that might be the case. I do not say that even with portmaster things went smooth. In fact I haven't got a single smooth ports upgrade in FreeBSD since 2.7 (circa 1997). Two ports multimedia/x264 and net/kdenetwork4 could pretty much act as show stoppers. Nevertheless, and despite that, the whole experience felt much much more solid, and fast. Speed is also a big advantage of portmaster vs portupgrade. Portmaster rocks.


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## Beeblebrox (Dec 23, 2011)

I never used portupgrade, have been using portmaster since the start. If I remember correctly, portupgrade needs to create a separate database for internals, while portmaster does not.

You can speed up portmaster with the -CKB flags. C&K: Don't clean before and after the build. B: Don't do a backup of already installed version. I first delete everything under my WORKDIRPREFIX, thereby releasing portmaster from the process of cleaning-up and it can spend the resources on builds. `# portmaster -L | grep New` will give a list of all ports to be upgraded. I then upgrade in 2 or 3 separate stages, since usually there are some problematic builds, I don't want portmaster to stop and re-start.


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## dougb@ (Dec 31, 2011)

Thanks for the kind words.


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## ddaley (Dec 31, 2011)

I'll have to try the *CKB* flags next time I doing anything with portmaster.  portmaster is great, but the port that has been causing grief for me is the kdepimlibs4.  Why kdenetwork and kdeadmin ports require kdepimlib is beyond me.  It would be nice if someone would figure out the minimal libs are required for these other ports, move them out of kdepimlib so that that port isn't so vital...


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## achix (Jan 17, 2012)

Another successful session with ports-mgmt/portmaster!! What a great tool! I have never felt happier with FreeBSD (during the last 14 years of using it) than now. An ultra great tool. I was sick with ports-mgmt/portupgrade. Now I can say FreeBSD's update process can even rock some linuxes.


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