[34218] trunk/dports/lang

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jul 13, 2008, at 17:30, Caspar Florian Ebeling wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 11:48 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>> On Feb 18, 2008, at 03:13, erickt at macports.org wrote:
>>
>>> +post-destroot {
>>> +  cd ${destroot}${prefix}
>>
>> Please don't use the "cd" command. It does not exist in MacPorts
>> trunk and will not exist in MacPorts 1.7.0 and later.
>
> What is the whole story to this change? Does "cd" work in 1.6 but
> not in trunk? Why was it necessary and is no longer? Is this  
> documented
> somewhere maybe? Just curious because I ran into build problems
> with this in a very recently changed port, so some configurations
> apparently do accept it, while trunk does not.


The "cd" command changes the working directory for the tcl  
interpreter, and this change lives on until the tcl interpreter  
stops. This means that if you "cd" somewhere in, say, the configure  
phase, then the interpreter will still be in that directory in the  
build and destroot and activate phases. If a portfile relies on this,  
it can be confusing to people trying to understand how a portfile  
works. There may also be other reasons that I have forgotten at this  
time.

I think it was never intended for ports to use the "cd" command, but  
many port did, and its use went undetected (or those who noticed its  
use didn't think anything of it) until after the release of MacPorts  
1.5.0. The "cd" command was going to be removed in MacPorts 1.6.0 but  
there were still so many ports using it that "cd" was retained in  
1.6.0. But it is absent in trunk (which will be 1.7.0 one day). The  
use of the "cd" command should be removed from all ports.


See:

http://trac.macports.org/ticket/12914