Is my MacPorts really sync-ing?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jul 5, 2007, at 19:34, Mark Hattam wrote:

> "selfupdate" is the command shown in the Wiki
> http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports/wiki/ 
> UsingMacPortsQuickStart
>
> and the text there says it's for grabbing the latest PortFiles.

"sync" is the command for grabbing the latest portfiles.

"selfupdate" grabs the latest portfiles and also updates the base  
MacPorts software if necessary.

> i thought that the number after the underscore on the end of the  
> port name showed the version of the Portfile ... so even if the  
> version of the software hadn't changed, a change in the Portfile  
> and perhaps important things about the way it's set up and  
> installed were reflected by a incrementing number, and these were  
> shown up by port outdated.
>
> For instance
>   freetype @2.3.4_0
>   freetype @2.3.4_1
>   freetype @2.3.5_0 (active)

The number before the underscore is taken from the "version" field in  
the portfile. The number after the underscore is from the "revision"  
field in the portfile. In the case of jberry's change to the apache2  
portfile in r26538, neither "version" nor "revision" were changed, as  
you can see from the diff, hence the port does not show up as being  
outdated.

Consider that I might just be adding a comment to a portfile, or  
changing its description. For such changes, it would make no sense to  
force the entire MacPorts user population to upgrade the port if they  
already had it installed, because the thing they'll end up with is  
the same thing they already have now. The comments or description I  
changed would not affect how the software builds. However, if I do  
make a change to the portfile that does cause the installed product  
to be different -- as in the case of jberry's change from r26538  
which changes the behavior of the startup item -- then the revision  
field in the portfile should also be bumped so that everyone is  
forced to reinstall it.

I have incremented the revision of apache2 in r26755, so after the  
rsync server pulls the change (within 12 hours) and after you do a  
"sudo port sync" (or "sudo port selfupdate" if you like), "port  
outdated" will show an installed apache2 as being outdated.

> So are portfile changes no longer reflected in this way? Or is  
> there a different port command to show them up?

If you would like a port to be reinstalled even though it's not  
showing up as being outdated, you can force it, e.g.:

sudo port -ncuf upgrade apache2