Deprecating port list

Jeremy Lavergne jeremy at lavergne.gotdns.org
Thu Mar 12 11:12:17 PDT 2009


>>> 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?

I wouldn't expect any logic operations to actually take place in the  
examples above.  I'd expect it to do the command on each one  
independently.  When it comes across depends:expat (or something else  
that's a "reserved" name, I would expect it to function according to  
what the command is, and apply it to the following ports.

> port list depends:expat a*

For this, I would expect list to show me what ports starting with a  
depend on expat.  How it goes about it presently is different than i  
would expect.

> port info vim expat bzip2

I would expect port info to be run against vim, then expat, then bzip2.

It's just a matter of how I feel port list works.  I clearly  
misunderstood how it was going about its business.
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