First port installation fails

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Dec 13, 2007, at 09:36, Richard Tobin wrote:

>> The p5-pathtools needs to overwrite the older pathtools that come  
>> with
>> perl5.8 in order to be found (perl searches the vendor location last
>> by default, and the perl community consensus is that this is the
>> appropriate way to upgrade modules that ship with perl).
>>
>> To that end, p5-pathtools would have printed out:
>>
>> "You must install or activate this package with '-f' (force) as it
>> needs to overwrite files installed by the perl5.8 port"
>>
>> You can run `sudo port -f install p5-pathtools` and then try
>> installing firefox-x11 again and it should work.
>
> I did that, and it said:
>
> macpro$ sudo port -f install p5-pathtools
> --->  Installing p5-pathtools 3.25_0
> Error: Target org.macports.install returned: Registry error: p5- 
> pathtools @3.25_0 already registered as installed.  Please  
> uninstall it first.
> Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
>
> So I now try "sudo port install firefox-x11" again.  It aborts with
>
> --->  Staging p5-getopt-long into destroot
> You must install or activate this package with '-f' (force) as it  
> needs to overwrite files installed by the perl5.8 port
> --->  Installing p5-getopt-long 2.37_0
> --->  Activating p5-getopt-long 2.37_0
> Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: Image error: /opt/ 
> local/lib/perl5/5.8.8/Getopt/Long.pm is being used by the active  
> perl5.8 port.  Please deactivate this port first, or use the -f  
> flag to force the activation.
> Error: The following dependencies failed to build: gnome-icon-theme  
> icon-naming-utils p5-getopt-long p5-xml-simple p5-test-simple p5- 
> test-harness p5-xml-namespacesupport p5-xml-sax p5-xml-parser gnome- 
> vfs dbus docbook-xml-4.1.2 xmlcatmgr libxml2 xmlto docbook-xml-4.2  
> docbook-xsl getopt libxslt dbus-glib gconf gtk2 atk gtk-doc  
> scrollkeeper docbook-xml docbook-xml-4.3 docbook-xml-4.4 docbook- 
> xml-4.5 jpeg pango Xft2 xorg-xproto xorg-util-macros tiff intltool  
> orbit2 libidl gnome-mime-data howl neon openssl zip
> Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
>
> I try to install firefox-x11 yet again, and yet again it fails in the
> same way, this time for p5-test-harness.  Then p5-test-simple.
> After that it seems to proceed happily.  But surely we're not
> supposed to have to do this by hand?

Currently, several perl modules must overwrite parts of the perl port  
to function properly. To do so, you must use the force flag. As the  
error message says:

"You must install or activate this package with '-f' (force) as it  
needs to overwrite files installed by the perl5.8 port"

However you should not usually use the force flag the rest of the time.