So today I got around to running portmaster again to update to the latest packages.

===>  pkgconf-0.8.5 conflicts with installed package(s): 
      pkg-config-0.25_1
 
      They install files into the same place.
      Please remove them first with pkg_delete(1).
*** Error code 1
 
Stop in /usr/ports/devel/pkgconf.

You may have seen the above before with other updates in the past. Unfortunately not all the package maintainers have set up the packages to be smart enough to make the transition from one old package to a new one so smooth.

You might have even tried to do this:

# pkg_delete pkg-config-0.25_1
pkg_delete: package 'pkg-config-0.25_1' is required by these other packages
and may not be deinstalled:
libstatgrab-0.17
freecolor-0.8.8
xproto-7.0.22
libxslt-1.1.26_3
libpthread-stubs-0.3_3
libXau-1.0.6
libXdmcp-1.1.0
libxcb-1.7
...

To no avail. (or you didn’t know the package name, pkg_info | grep pkg would help)

To fix you simply have to perform the following:

pkg_delete -f pkg-config-0.25_1
cd /usr/ports/devel/pkgconf
make install clean

If you are not logged in as root you may need to `su` into root privileges or use sudo.

From there you can run portmaster again to proceed with the upgrades/updates as needed. If you run accross this problem again with another package just repeat the same kind of steps, forcefully removing the old one and reinstalling the new one from ports yourself.