[MacPorts] #17427: MacPorts 1.6 installation failure after Leopard hard drive replacement

[MacPorts]

#17427: MacPorts 1.6 installation failure after Leopard hard drive replacement
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 Reporter:  equipoise1@…            |       Owner:  macports-tickets@…                   
     Type:  defect                  |      Status:  new                                  
 Priority:  Normal                  |   Milestone:  Port Bugs                            
Component:  ports                   |     Version:  1.6.0                                
 Keywords:                          |        Port:                                       
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 I recently replaced a hard drive on my Core2Duo MacBook Pro. I had
 previously installed MacPorts on the old drive. After replacing the old
 drive and installing leopard, I had all of my Mac OS X user settings
 copied onto the new drive. I then installed Xcode and X11. Next I
 installed MacPorts on the new drive. Then I tried:

   port variants octave

 and

   port install octave

 This chugged away for a while but produced error msgs. The gist of these
 concerned Perl 5.8.8.something and the fact that /some/path/to/a2p is
 being used (is active?) by an earlier version of perl5. I've googled to
 some stuff about this, including the same error msg. This msg includes a
 suggestion about using the "-f" option.

 Question 1: Where do I read about the "-f" option, which I believe
 pertains to the "port" command, and information explaining other options?
 An hour of googling on this has been largely unproductive. I've also been
 unable to bring up a man page on "port".

 I believe these problems have to do with vestigial registry information
 from my earlier installation on the old drive. Now I'd like to revert my
 OS to where it stood after I installed it on the new drive but before I
 installed MacPorts. I'm concerned about losing things like gcc, which
 existed independent of what I've tried with MacPorts.

 Question 2: How can I remove everything related to MacPorts, including
 anything that it did install, while not endangering things that would have
 been come with the Leopard and Xcode installation I did?

 Question 3: Before removing things installed under MacPorts, is there a
 way to determine which of these components may be usable?

 Question 4: When I've purged the old things, should I be able to reinstall
 MacPorts according to the instructions in the guide, or will some
 alternative approach be required?

 Thanks.

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Ticket URL: <http://trac.macports.org/ticket/17427>
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