variants question

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 7, 2007, at 20:36, belinda thom wrote:

> One final question: how does port handle the case where you've  
> already installed something (e.g. subversion) and you then want to  
> "add on" a variant (e.g. +tools)? Does it do a completely new  
> reinstall, or does it piggy-back off of existing things when it  
> can? Is it standard practice to clean out the existing (via  
> port ... clean) before adding the new variant?

Well, you can only have a port activated once. If you already have it  
activated with one set of variants (or with no variants), then you  
cannot also have it activated with a different set of variants. You  
can have it *installed* (compiled) with other sets of variants, but  
only one of the installed combinations can be *active* (used) at a time.

For example, if you did this before:

sudo port install subversion +no_bdb

And now you decide that you also wanted the tools, you could

sudo port install subversion +no_bdb +tools

After it finishes compiling, it will tell you it cannot activate the  
new Subversion because another one is already active. You can then  
uninstall the other Subversion by specifying the complete version and  
variant string, like this:

sudo port uninstall subversion @1.4.2+no_bdb

And then activating the new one:

sudo port activate subversion

Or, instead of uninstalling, you could just deactivate the old one:

sudo port deactivate subversion @1.4.2+no_bdb

And then activate the new one:

sudo port activate subversion @1.4.2+no_bdb+tools

(Here you need to specify the full version/variant string to port  
activate because there's still more than one installed.)