zef, the package manager for Rakudo, needs to be installed as part of the port

[raf]

On Thu, Nov 23, 2023 at 08:20:24PM -0800, Kenneth Wolcott <kennethwolcott at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi;
> 
> zef, the package manager for Rakudo, needs to be installed as part of the port
> 
> Zef, the Rakudo package manager, really needs to be part of the Rakudo
> port.  Just like Ruby needs the Gem, Nim needs Nimble, Perl needs
> CPAN.
> 
> It's not hard to build Zef manually, but I think it should be
> automatically installed as a dependency of Rakudo.
> 
> Thanks,
> Ken Wolcott

I'd be happy if I could install zef at all via macports.
It doesn't have to be part of raku's portfile. Debian
has separate packages for them.

This issue indicates that a Portfile *for* zef is planned:

  https://github.com/ugexe/zef/issues/516

But it looks like it's actually trying to use zef to create
a package for a raku module (unless I've misunderstood the log
output there - I probably have), but zef doesn't work like that.
And zef uses itself to install itself, so it looks like it isn't
suitable for packaging systems.

There might not be interest in changing zef for use with
packaging systems. The questions in that issue were asked
six months ago with no response. It might need a patch
to hack the raku module path so that zef is tricked into
doing what's needed.

cheers,
raf