Update port reinstallation instruction on wiki

Jimmy Wong wyuenho at gmail.com
Mon Oct 2 22:21:57 UTC 2023


On Oct 2, 2023 at 10:58 PM +0100, Joshua Root <jmr at macports.org>, wrote:
> On 3/10/2023 08:17, Jimmy Wong wrote:
> > On Oct 2, 2023 at 8:13 AM +0100, Joshua Root <jmr at macports.org>, wrote:
> >
> > This won't necessarily restore the variants of non-requested ports
> > correctly, and will sometimes install the same port multiple
> > times (a
> > requested port that is a dep of another requested port can be first
> > installed with its default variants, then again with its previously
> > requested variants.)
> >
> >
> > Yes it will. The requested.txt files produced this way come with
> > variants.
> You can't possibly restore the state of non-requested ports when you
> only record information about requested ones.
>

The state of non-requested ports is the dependents and their variants right? Is there anything else? I'm not sure I understand your objection. Is there a situation where my previous explanation fails to restore the "state"? My instruction removes all versions, so even if you've done a `port selfupdate` right before restoration, and some of the ports have upgraded, it'll just work. Whereas, in the current instruction, the last setrequested step will fail.
> If you understand the process well enough to evaluate the tradeoff of
> not restoring quite all the state, you are not really the target
> audience for the Migration instructions.

Who is the instruction for anyway? There are so many edge cases that require manual intervention. How many noobs are able to fix these problems themselves before they give up and reinstall every port manually one by one?
> If you don't mind dealing with
> the occasional problem due to opportunistic use, you're free to simply
> run 'sudo port upgrade outdated' after reinstalling base.
>

I do mind.
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