# portupgrade



## jaymax (Sep 12, 2009)

Doing an upgrade, and a "portupgrade -af", it seems to be running forever, several hours so far. Does it do a make, install etc on all compiled systems on disks, stuff in /var/db or ? Could someone say? The doc that I could find seems somewhat fuzzy on this.

Thanks


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## DutchDaemon (Sep 12, 2009)

portupgrade -af means 'upgrade all installed ports (indicated by pkg_info, or by everything under /var/db/ports), whether they need to be upgraded or not' -- in other words: all of your installed ports will be rebuilt.


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## fronclynne (Sep 12, 2009)

Which, if you have openoffice installed, will take a metric eternity and gobble 11G of disk space while doing so.


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## DutchDaemon (Sep 12, 2009)

And sea levels may even rise.


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## jaymax (Sep 12, 2009)

Now if I am going across several versions to bring the O/S up to date, as in 6.0 => 6.4 => 7.0 => 7.2 is it advised to do this "portupgrade -af" at each step?


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## DutchDaemon (Sep 12, 2009)

No, that would be overkill. The GENERIC kernel always has 'compat' settings for previous major releases (and ports compiled under them), so they will continue to work under a compatibility layer. Once you arrive at your final OS, portupgrade -af is advisable. Moreover, doing a full portupgrade is only necessary when upgrading to the next *major* level (6 -> 7 -> 8), not the next *minor* level (6.0 -> 6.4, 7.0 -> 7.2)


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