MacPorts 1.9.0-beta1 now available for testing

[Joshua Root]

Source code and disk images for MacPorts 1.9.0-beta1 are now
available [1]. Since selfupdate installs from source, testing of either
install method is helpful.

While there are no known regressions from 1.8.2 at this point, be
prepared to encounter bugs. Please report any that you find [2] (after
first searching Trac [3], of course!)

There are a large number of changes in this release. See the ChangeLog
[4] for a list of most of them. You may like to focus your testing on
the new features in that list, as well as your normal usage. If you
think that usability could be improved by tweaking the UI for any of the
new features, please let us know about that too. (For example: would
'port rdeps' make more sense as 'port deps --recursive/--r'?)

One particular change that requires special attention is the new sqlite
registry format, which will be the preferred format moving forward. It
is the default for new installs, but existing installs will need their
macports.conf edited in order to use it, by changing 'portdbformat flat'
to 'portdbformat sqlite'. After making this change, your existing flat
receipts will be converted the first time you run port(1) with
sufficient privileges (this usually means using sudo).

Note that there is no conversion in the opposite direction, so if you
change back, the flat registry will not reflect any changes made to your
installed ports while using the sqlite format, and will therefore be
inconsistent with what is actually installed.

Cheers,
Josh

[1] <http://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/testing/>
[2] <http://trac.macports.org/newticket>
[3] <http://trac.macports.org/search>
[4] <http://trac.macports.org/browser/branches/release_1_9/base/ChangeLog>