How can I tell if a port is installed as +universal?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Dec 28, 2007, at 11:37, LeAnne Lis wrote:

> If I want to update all of my ports to +universal, then, what would  
> be the
> best way?  I'm guessing, based on the FAQ, that probably I should  
> completely
> remove my MacPorts installation and start over?

Complete removal and reinstallation of MacPorts is a good idea if you  
have, for example, all of your ports built for PowerPC, but have  
migrated to an Intel Mac.

But if you have all your ports built for the correct architecture for  
your system already, and just want to start installing universal  
versions, then you can do it a bit at a time. I'm doing this. Look at  
your installed ports, and find one that has no dependencies. ("port  
deps foo" will tell you.) For example, you probably have zlib  
installed, and zlib has no dependencies. Forcibly uninstall this port  
and reinstall it with the +universal variant:

sudo port -f uninstall zlib
sudo port clean --work zlib
sudo port install zlib +universal

Once that builds, do the same for another port with no dependencies,  
or one which depends only on the ports you've already reinstalled as  
universal. For example, libpng only depends on zlib, so if you've  
rebuilt zlib universal, you can then try installing libpng universal.

You certainly could alternately just delete all of MacPorts and  
reinstall, always selecting the +universal variant when installing  
ports. But some ports may not yet build universal, so you might be  
forced to install some ports non-universal anyway.

Note that the only reason why you'd need to install universal  
versions of ports at all is if you plan to use your installed ports  
on both a PowerPC and an Intel Mac, for example if you install  
MacPorts to an external hard drive that you move between a PowerPC  
and an Intel Mac. If you're just using MacPorts on a single Mac, you  
don't need universal ports.