Too many libconfig's

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Nov 18, 2008, at 18:57, David Evans wrote:

> I was trying to install ntfsprogs +crypto today and found that it  
> failed
> configuration looking for a pkg-config file for libconfig.
>
> We have a port libconfig but it doesn't provide pkg-config files and
> definitely isn't the one that ntfsprogs is looking for (completely
> different API).
>
> The homepage for our libconfig is
>
> http://www.rkeene.org/oss/libconfig
>
> Found the libconfig that ntfsprogs is looking for at
>
> http://www.hyperrealm.com/libconfig/
>
>
> So the question is how to differentiate these two packages:
>
> 1) Current libconfig port  is not referenced by any other port  
> based on
> grep of the current dports tree. Could replace this one with the  
> new one
> but they really are different packages and someone might be using the
> current one somewhere.
>
> 2) Commit the new libconfig package as libconfig-new or the like
> (suggestions welcome) and make ntfsprogs depend upon it.
>
> 3) Rename the existing one (libconfig-old) and make the new one  
> libconfig.
>
> 4) Something else.
>
> Ideas and suggestions are solicited and appreciated.
>
> By the way, the newer package has both C and C++ interfaces which  
> may be
> the story behind this ticket:
>
> http://trac.macports.org/ticket/14035

(3) is problematic because there is no built-in way to rename ports.  
Sure, you can "svn mv" the old port to a different directory, but  
MacPorts doesn't know you did that; any users who have the old port  
installed will think it's the same as the new port since they'll  
share the same name.

You may want to contact the authors of both software packages. Ask if  
there is any relation between the two, if one is meant to replace the  
other, or what. And if not, if they have any suggestions for  
disambiguating the names (this problem won't be unique to MacPorts  
and should ideally be fixed upstream).