Upgrading gettext breaks many ports

[Frank McPherson]

On Oct 2, 2006, at 7:02 AM, Piet van Oostrum wrote:

>>>>>> Vincent Lefevre <vincent-opdarw at vinc17.org> (VL) wrote:
>
>> VL> On 2006-09-25 17:06:02 -0400, David Glasser wrote:
>>>> Maybe portfiles can contain a flag that says "rebuild my dependents
>>>> when you install me"?
>
>> VL> This may be nice in some cases, but won't solve the real problem,
>> VL> which is that a library should never be removed by an upgrade
>> VL> (replaced by a compatible version, with the same name OK, but
>> VL> not removed just because there exists a different, incompatible
>> VL> version). Indeed, for various reasons (e.g. bugs), rebuilding
>> VL> some ports may fail. Ditto for other programs compiled/installed
>> VL> directly by the user (i.e. not via MacPorts).
>
>> VL> Some files could be flagged to prevent their removal (while still
>> VL> allowing their replacement), except when the removal is  
>> explicitly
>> VL> requested by the user.
>
> I think the dependency systems should be much more sophisticated.
> Preferably with automatic garbage collection to prevent libraries from
> disappearing when they are still needed. I think MacPorts would be  
> a good
> candidate for NiX: <http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/Trace/Nix> and if  
> people are
> interested I can see if we can start a research project to develop  
> a NiX
> version of MacPorts.

I agree that the dependency system should be more sophisticated. I'd  
like to help with this issue because I've spent a lot of time  
recently trying to sort out these library dependency issues on my  
macports systems.

It's difficult to tell anything about the stability of the NiX  
project from their webpage. Their subversion repository does have  
some recent activity, but it is all one developer. Do you have a good  
idea of the stability and activity on the project?

I think it would be useful to gain a good understanding of the  
implementation and limitations of the current package management  
system, and also to objectively compare other package management  
systems we could use. The core macports folks would have to weigh in  
on these issues since they'd be the ones merging in any changes.  
There's a mention in /opt/local/etc/ports.conf about an sqlite db  
format; it might be worthwhile to find out more about the status of  
that effort.



--
Frank McPherson