Upgrading ports and preserve make options

FreeBSD uses make options while building ports in order to build a certain extension or (de)activate certain features.

MySQL 4.1 for example can be build with the following options:

WITH_CHARSET=charset
WITH_XCHARSET=list
WITH_COLLATION=collate
WITH_OPENSSL=yes
WITH_LINUXTHREADS=yes
WITH_PROC_SCOPE_PTH=yes
BUILD_OPTIMIZED=yes
BUILD_STATIC=yes
WITHOUT_INNODB=yes
WITH_NDB=yes

There are two ways of utilizing these options. If the port uses OPTIONS in the Makefile, you can configure the options with

# cd /usr/ports/databases/mysql41-server
# make config

You will get an ncurses screen from which you can choose your options. Your configuration will be saved in /var/db/ports/PORTNAME/options and each time you build this port you get the same options. Reconfiguration is done through calling make config in the port directory again.

But many ports do not use the OPTIONS framework in their Makefiles. MySQL for example does not.

If you want to use some of the build options you have to do it like this:

# cd /usr/ports/databases/mysql41-server
# make -DBUILD_OPTIMIZED install clean

The problem is that you build options are not saved. So when you have to update MySQL, you can't just use portupgrade -a because your options will be lost. You have to upgrade MySQL yourself (make && make deinstall && make install clean) and remember to use all your options again.

The author of portupgrade though of this problem and introduced /usr/local/etc/pkgtools.conf. With pkgtools.conf you can specify arguments that portupgrade uses while upgrading a port.

MAKE_ARGS = {
# a) Separate them with the space
'databases/mysql41-*' => 'WITH_LINUXTHREADS=1 BUILD_STATIC=1',

# b) Specify them using an array
'databases/mysql41-*' => [
'WITH_LINUXTHREADS=1',
'BUILD_STATIC =1',
],
}

So you just edit all your ports with the correct build options here and you're done right? No.

Only portupgrade will use this file so if you happen to build any of the ports yourself, your options are not used. And worse, if a port gets updated THROUGH portupgrade as a dependency of another port, the options will NOT BE USED by portupgrade.

So the only solution left is to use /etc/make.conf.