Best practices for port testing environment?

[Lothar Haeger]

A separate macOS install in Parallels or Fusion would be another option, I guess.

> Am 27.06.2020 um 16:31 schrieb Joshua Root <jmr at macports.org>:
> 
> 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