Is my MacPorts really sync-ing?

[Mark Hattam]

I have MacPorts 1.4.2 on OSX 10.4.10

Whenever I've done a port sync recently (and I do it most days), I 
seem to be downloading the whole heirarchy every time, and none of my 
ports are outdated when I do a port outdated. I used to just get a 
listing of the ports that had changed when I did a sudo port -d 
selfupdate, I can't believe that everything is updated every day. 
Maybe it is subtly changing every day, but it just seems to be the 
same long list every day ...

For instance

Last login: Thu Jul  5 00:13:06 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
powerbook:~ user$ sudo port -d selfupdate
Password:
DEBUG: Rebuilding the MacPorts base system if needed.
DEBUG: Synchronizing dports tree(s)
Synchronizing from rsync://rsync.darwinports.org/dpupdate/dports
receiving file list ... done
./
aqua/
aqua/Affiche/
aqua/AppKiDo/
aqua/AquaLess/
aqua/ArpSpyX/
aqua/AssignmentTrackerX/
aqua/BigSQL/
aqua/BigSQL/files/

... and so on ...

zope/zope-zphotoslides/files/
zope/zope-zsyncer/
PortIndex
aqua/Growl/files/patch-Growl.xcodeproj__project.pbxproj.i386
aqua/Growl/files/patch-Growl.xcodeproj__project.pbxproj.powerpc
aqua/Growl/files/patch-Makefile
databases/mysql5/Portfile
databases/sqlite3/Portfile
databases/sqlite3/files/patch-Makefile.in
devel/dialog/Portfile

... and so on ...

textproc/libmrss/Portfile
textproc/libnxml/Portfile
deleting textproc/libmrss/files/patch-src-mrss_parser.c
deleting directory textproc/libmrss/files

sent 9951 bytes  received 287107 bytes  13202.58 bytes/sec
total size is 14699706  speedup is 49.48
DEBUG: MacPorts base dir: 
/opt/local/var/db/dports/sources/rsync.rsync.darwinports.org_dpupdate1/base
DEBUG: Setting user: root
DarwinPorts base version 1.442 installed
DEBUG: Updating using rsync
receiving file list ... done
./
Mk/
config/
doc/
doc/exampleport/
portmgr/
portmgr/bots/
portmgr/dmg/
src/
src/cflib1.0/
src/darwinports1.0/
src/darwintracelib1.0/
src/package1.0/
src/pextlib1.0/
src/pextlib1.0/tests/
src/port/
src/port1.0/
src/port1.0/resources/
src/port1.0/resources/fetch/
src/port1.0/resources/group/
src/port1.0/resources/package/
src/port1.0/tests/
src/portindex/
src/programs/
src/programs/daemondo/
src/registry1.0/
tests/
tests/test/
tests/test/checksums-1/
tests/test/cvs-and-patchsites/
tests/test/dependencies-a/
tests/test/dependencies-b/
tests/test/dependencies-c/
tests/test/envvariables/
tests/test/site-tags/
tests/test/trace/
tests/test/universal/
tests/test/universal-2/
tests/test/xcodeversion/

sent 77 bytes  received 4957 bytes  2013.60 bytes/sec
total size is 2093103  speedup is 415.79
Downloaded MacPorts base version 1.442
The MacPorts installation is not outdated and so was not updated
DEBUG: Setting ownership to root
selfupdate done!