Deprecating port list

[Rainer Müller]

Jeremy Lavergne wrote:
>> Note that the command echo exists to test such expansions:
>>  port echo depends:expat and 'a*'
>> Gives you a list of all ports that depend on expat and start with the
>> character 'a'.
> 
> I'm confused why the user has to come up with all these queries rather  
> than just doing:
> port list depends:expat a*

The default logical operator is "or". Your example is equivalent to:
 port list depends:expat or 'a*'

If it would default to "and", you would be unable to do things like:
 port info vim expat bzip2

Okay, these simple examples above are handled a bit different
internally, but I hope you get the point.

More complicated:
 port echo inactive and \(vim expat bzip2\)
which is the simplified form of:
 port echo inactive and \(vim or expat or bzip2\)

Note: Use quotes as the shell will also expand wildcards.

> It just seems that in order to use these "special features" a lot more  
> work is done by the user each time rather than devoting that energy to  
> having MacPorts do stuff.  Granted you can write a program to know  
> what your user is doing.

I don't see where the user has to do more work?

>> list extras and list recent, I have no idea what is meant by those.
> 
> Extras is just a repository for things outside the main repo.  Recent  
> are basically "added in X days" or since you ran it last --- software  
> you might to try out or know about.

MacPorts treats all sources added in sources.conf the same, with the
[default] tag being the exception. There is lot of room for improvements
in this area.

For 'recent', the PortIndex does not contain timestamps when a port was
added/modified. I don't think it should as there is no reliable source
to get that information (examining commit log? filesystem mtime?).

Rainer