# FreeBSD system and ports upgrading question



## alexixor (Aug 9, 2011)

Hello all.

I am not sure if this fits here or in the ports forum, please feel free to relocate the thread if necessary. 

If I have a FreeBSD 7 server, I would not have to upgrade the whole OS, if I want to upgrade MySQL 5.0 to 5.1, right?

Or in reverse, if I have installed Mysql 5.0 on FreeBSD 7.4 and I decide to upgrade FreeBSD to 8.2, I won't have to upgrade Mysql too, right?

So following this, I can "decouple" OS updates from "third party applications", which is important and convenient, IMO.

Or am I completely wrong about this?


----------



## DutchDaemon (Aug 9, 2011)

OS and applications can be upgraded separately, so long as you stay _within a major OS release_. So you can upgrade FreeBSD from 8.0-RELEASE all the way to (for the sake of argument) 8.9-STABLE without having to recompile your posts. But when you go to FreeBSD 9 you will have to recompile your ports, or run a compatibility layer (basically a port that will be called misc/compat8x containing the older libraries). The latter only as a temporary measure.


----------



## alexixor (Aug 9, 2011)

Ok that cleared it up for me, thanks a lot.


----------



## alexixor (Aug 9, 2011)

Taking this a bit further, say I have a FreeBSD 6 system. Would I be able to update/upgrade say apache "indefinitely"?

Or in other words, is there a minimum FreeBSD version that a port requires?


----------



## wblock@ (Aug 9, 2011)

Some ports require certain versions of the operating system.  It depends on the port.  But it's not just apache, but all the ports it depends on.


----------



## alexixor (Aug 9, 2011)

How can I know if a specific version of the OS is required?

Can I find it from the description on Fresh Ports, for example?


----------



## wblock@ (Aug 9, 2011)

The manual way is to look in the port Makefile for tests on OSVERSION.

It would be easier if there was a recursive way to check for OSVERSION dependencies, or BROKEN or IGNORE variables.  Maybe make missing, but I don't think so.

But more to the point: trying to stick with an old version of FreeBSD while updating ports is a mistake.  Upgrading the OS isn't particularly difficult, and has real benefits.  Trying to upgrade just one port while keeping old versions of the others is another strategy that is counterproductive.


----------

