Freebsd – How to deal with FreeBSD’s move to pkgconf

bsd-portsfreebsdpkg-config

It seems that the FreeBSD ports tree is busy transitioning from pkg-config to pkgconf. http://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-ports-announce@freebsd.org/msg00018.html

I first thought as an end user this would not influence me and that a tool like portmaster would be taking care of any transition. However today, the regular portmaster -a gave the following problem:

sudo portmaster -a
===>>> Gathering distinfo list for installed ports

===>>> Starting check of installed ports for available updates

    ===>>> The devel/pkg-config port moved to devel/pkgconf
    ===>>> Reason: pkg-config has been replace by pkgconf

===>>> Launching child to reinstall pkg-config-0.25_1

===>>> All >> pkg-config-0.25_1 (1/1)

    ===>>> The devel/pkg-config port moved to devel/pkgconf
    ===>>> Reason: pkg-config has been replace by pkgconf


===>>> Port directory: /usr/ports/devel/pkgconf

===>>> Launching 'make checksum' for devel/pkgconf in background
===> No options to configure
===>>> Gathering dependency list for devel/pkgconf from ports
===>>> No dependencies for devel/pkgconf

===>>> Returning to update check of installed ports


===>>> All >> (1)

===>>> The following actions will be taken if you choose to proceed:
    Install devel/pkgconf

===>>> Proceed? y/n [y]


Finishing with:


Stop in /usr/ports/devel/pkgconf.

===>>> Installation of pkgconf-0.8.4 (devel/pkgconf) failed
===>>> Aborting update

===>>> Update for devel/pkgconf failed
===>>> Aborting update

Terminated

===>>> You can restart from the point of failure with this command line:
       portmaster <flags> devel/pkgconf

What should a 'normal' user of FreeBSD do? I can't remove pkg-config as a lot of ports depend on it. How can this be fixed?

Best Answer

You should always read /usr/ports/UPDATING before carrying out a port upgrade. In this case, it has this to say about the deprecation of pkg-config:

20120726:
  AFFECTS: users of devel/pkg-config
  AUTHOR: bapt@FreeBSD.org

  devel/pkg-config has been replaced by devel/pkgconf

  # portmaster -o devel/pkgconf devel/pkg-config
  or
  # portupgrade -fo devel/pkgconf pkg-config-\*

  pkgng:
  # pkg set -o devel/pkg-config:devel/pkgconf
  # pkg install -f devel/pkgconf

If you follow these instructions, your ports management tool of choice (which seems to be portmaster in your case) will remove pkg-config and install pkgconf, and will update the package registry database under /var/db/pkg to reflect the change. If you were a portupgrade user, the upgrade would also fix up the dependency graph in portupgrade's own database, which is separate from the standard registry.

Future installs/upgrades should "just work".

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