If you use the FreeBSD operating system as much as I do, you've most likely come to love the portupgrade program because it makes maintaining updated software so easy.
However, if you're like me, you've also noticed that occasionally
running portupgrade -arR can cause problems because of
changes in ports. Luckily, FreeBSD now includes the
/usr/ports/UPDATING file that alerts folks like us to
such problems before they occur. But UPDATING is getting
big fast, and it isn't going to stop growing any time soon. If you're
like me, you're lazy and don't like to read through it, or just forget.
So I wrote portupgrade-check.pl to make my life easier.
portupgrade-check.pl goes through all your installed ports
and checks /usr/ports/UPDATING for references to them. It
displays the most recent reference it finds for each port that you have
installed. You still have to read through the output to see what (if
anything) you need to be careful of, but there's a lot less to
read now!
There is none. It's pretty simple. Just unzip the script, ensure it has execute permissions and run it. If the output scrolls off your screen, you may want to try one of the two options below:
portupgrade-check.pl | more portupgrade-check.pl > somefile.txt
The first command uses the pager to allow you to easily scroll through
the output. The second will put the output in somefile.txt
so you can read through it with your favorite text editor.
UPDATING reference actually applied to the version of
the port that's installed. I'll have to think on this one ... some
kind of date comparison or something ...