Best practices for port testing environment?

[Joshua Root]

On 2020-6-28 00:23 , David Richmond wrote:
> New here to hacking on MacPorts; please talk to me like I'm dumb. Can
> anyone point me to a resource (or offer their own thoughts) on setting
> up test environments for ports?
> 
> The MacPorts Guide obviously describes setting up a local repository,
> but if I am, say, chasing a bug down during build, what is the
> best/easiest way to create a "clean" test environment? That is to say,
> say I have successfully built port_foo on my machine, but now a user or
> bug report says it's broken. (Perhaps a dependency is out of whack.) How
> can I build port_foo from "scratch," as if no ports at all are
> installed? (Without breaking my own, active macports tree, that is.)
> 
> I could just rename the port in the Portfile in my local repository, but
> macports will find my local installed dependencies and it seems to me I
> want a "clean" environment where it won't.
> 
> And please do redirect me to a different approach altogether if I am
> barking up the wrong tree.

You can use trace mode (-t option) to hide any ports that are not
declared as dependencies of the port being built. There are other
possible approaches like installing in a different prefix or temporarily
deactivating everything, but trace mode is the easiest and works well in
most cases, the main drawback being reduced performance.

- Josh