[MacPorts] ProblemHotlist modified

[Ryan Schmidt]

On May 24, 2010, at 11:17, Craig Fairhurst wrote:

> On 24 May 2010, at 17:09, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> 
>> On May 24, 2010, at 10:47, Craig Fairhurst wrote:
>> 
>>> Somebody had the same problem here: http://trac.macports.org/ticket/24934
>>> He assumed doing a manual checkout of gettext solved the problem but like someone indicated it wouldn't of had an effect. The reinstall is what solved his problem.
>> 
>> Are you sure that's the right ticket? As you can see, I have been following this ticket very closely, and I don't see this error message in this ticket. If it's in there, please point it out to me.
> 
> I came across the behavior following the thread of comments on that ticket. It wasn't until http://trac.macports.org/ticket/24934#comment:28 it started to work.

Mark was explaining that in order to build php52 with gettext 0.17, he uninstalled all of MacPorts, downgraded the gettext portfile to version 0.17, then installed php52 and all its dependencies, and this worked for him. Contrast this with the experience of other users in the ticket, who kept their ports installed, downgraded gettext, and then had problems because some of their other ports had already been built linked with gettext 0.18 and they had trouble identifying which ports those were in order to rebuild them.

This has nothing to do with the issue you are reporting, a build failure of gettext when Xcode is not installed.


>>> The generic message is returned because gettext is a common library although it could be any library really. Perhaps replacing "gettext" with "name of library" would be better.
>> 
>> No, I'm saying "Error: Unable to execute port: upgrade (port name) failed" is a generic message. It just means the port failed to upgrade. It says nothing about why it failed to upgrade. The real more-specific error message will be displayed on some line about this line.
> 
> It could be further pinpointed by mentioning that "make" wouldn't of been available in the first place, this was the only error message I had to hand.

In fact, we already have a FAQ entry about missing Xcode:

http://trac.macports.org/wiki/FAQ#missingxcode

If there are additional error messages that people frequently get when trying to install ports when Xcode is not installed, they should be added to that existing FAQ entry rather than adding a new FAQ or ProblemHotlist entry.


>>> Note: MacPorts didn't warn me about no Xcode install.
>> 
>> Are you running MacPorts 1.9+? We haven't released it yet.
> 
> Running 1.8.2 - the warning would of solved the problem - yes.

Well, it wouldn't have solved the problem... It looks like MacPorts 1.9+ will only output a warning, not an error. It will still proceed to try to install the port, and fail at the same point. And after the user installs Xcode, it will still fail again, unless the user realizes he has to clean the port. I wish MacPorts would output an error, not a warning.