error uninstalling inactive ports

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jul 2, 2013, at 03:53, Thomas Robitaille wrote:

> After upgrading all my packages, I've tried to uninstall all inactive
> packages, but I'm getting
> 
> $ sudo port uninstall inactive
> --->  Unable to uninstall py27-distribute @0.6.45_0, the following
> ports depend on it:
> --->   py27-nose @1.2.1_1
> --->   py27-bdist_mpkg @0.4.4_0
> --->   py27-html5lib @0.95_0
> --->   py27-dateutil @1.5_1
> --->   py27-m2crypto @0.21.1_0
> --->   py27-mysql @1.2.3_1+mysql5
> --->   py27-rope @0.9.2_0
> --->   py27-altgraph @0.10.2_0
> --->   py27-pyobjc @2.5.1_0
> --->   py27-ipython @0.13.2_0+scientific
> --->   py27-pygments @1.6_0
> --->   py27-roman @2.0.0_0
> --->   py27-numexpr @2.1_0
> --->   py27-bottleneck @0.6.0_0
> --->   py27-pandas @0.11.0_0
> --->   py27-pep8 @1.4.5_0
> --->   py27-dap @2.2.6.7_0
> --->   py27-jinja2 @2.7_0
> --->   py27-pip @1.3.1_0
> 
> Presumably this is a side-effect of the distribute -> setuptools
> merge.

Yes, that's why.


> Strangely, if I list the inactive packages I get:
> 
> py27-distribute                @0.7            python/py-distribute
> 
> i.e. not py27-distribute @0.6.45_0 -

That's because "port list" doesn't do what you think it does:

https://trac.macports.org/wiki/FAQ#portlist


> what is the solution in this
> case, do the above package need to be updated to require
> py27-setuptools instead of py27-distribute?

The packages have already been updated to require setuptools instead of distribute, however when we did that, we neglected to increase those ports' revisions. Therefore, if you already had those ports installed before the switch, the ports have not yet been rebuilt, and your MacPorts registry has not yet been updated for the new dependency. It still thinks those ports require distribute, but they no longer do, since setuptools has once again taken over that role.

You may safely force the uninstallation of distribute to resolve this issue, e.g.:

sudo port -f uninstall py27-distribute