MacPorts Portability, etc.?

[David Abrahams]

Hi MacPorts developers,

I'm trying to assess the suitability of parts of the MacPorts codebase
for use in the ryppl project (http://ryppl.org).  Accordingly, I have
some questions about the internals.  In particular, I'd like to know:

1) How tied to the Mac platform is MacPorts?  I don't mean the port
   collection; I mean the implementation of the "port" command.  

   * Does it use Mac-specific functionality?  
   * Does it use *nix-specific functionality?

2) What's the nature of MacPorts' dependency resolution algorithm?  

   * Is it very naïve?  

   * Does it always succeed in resolving dependencies when a
     resolution is possible?  (Not unreasonable to ask; it's an
     NP-complete problem).

   * Does it have a heuristic for choosing the best resolution among a
     collection of possible resolutions?

3) Is all of the code compatible with a BSD/MIT license model?  I
   looked in a few files, and it all seemed to be, but I don't know if
   there's a GPL'd module involved somewhere.


Thanks very much for taking the time to answer,

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com