[netsa-tools-discuss] upgrade process

[Mark Thomas]

Christoper-

Short answer:

If you have not installed the Analysis Pipeline and if you want to
remove unneeded files from your computer, it is best to uninstall
the old SiLK release before installing the new release.

Long answer:

If you install a new version of SiLK over an existing version, the
programs and manual pages for the previous version are replaced with
those from the newer version and everything should "just work".

A big issue that arises when upgrading SiLK is how the handling of
the shared libraries that SiLK creates and installs, for example,
/usr/local/lib/libsilk.so.16.0.0.

The version numbers of the shared libraries increases with nearly
every release of SiLK.  Sometimes the changes to the libraries are
compatible with older releases of SiLK and sometimes they are not.

If you do not uninstall the previous version of SiLK, these shared
library files remain behind.  Having them remain on your machine
does not harm anything other than the amount of free space on your
disk.

The Analysis Pipeline uses the SiLK libraries.  If you have also
installed it, then removing the older shared libraries may break
Pipeline if the libraries have changed in an incompatible way.  If
you rebuild Pipeline after you re-install SiLK, then Pipeline should
link against the newer version of the SiLK libraries.

We typically only remove applications and manual pages from the SiLK
distribution when the major version number of SiLK changes (such as
from 2.x.x to 3.x.x).  If you wish to remove those old applications,
then it is best to uninstall the previous installation of SiLK.

I hope that explanation helps.

Cheers,

-Mark


On Wed, 15 Oct 2014 09:12:39 -0600, Christoper Holland wrote:

> Would like to know the best process to upgrade silk? I installed from 
> source. Do I have to uninstall the old version then install the new 
> version or can I install the new version over the top of the old?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Christopher