hosting an internal macports server with binaries

[Guido Soranzio]

On May 8, 2007, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> Such a format does exist: It's called a .pkg file and you interact  
> with them every time you install an Apple software update. However,  
> I don't think there's any functionality in MacPorts to create or  
> use package files.

That's not correct: the creation of binary packages was indeed one of  
the
priorities of the orginal DarwinPorts project!

Besides the .pkg format, MacPorts supports (nowadays, theoretically)
the creation of .dpkg and RPM packages and the automatic building  
of .dmg
disk images.

In better times, there was even a repository (http:// 
packages.opendarwin.org)
which was populated by running the script base/portmgr/buildall.sh
and an experimental but usable project by Ole Guldberg Jensen, DPLight,
which patched DarwinPorts to support directly the RPM registry
(http://www.opendarwin.org/projects/dplight/): mounting the repositories
via WebDAV was a simple but perfect solution not only for the final  
users.

The most serious issue, however, was the lack of an official uninstaller
which should be currently -- paradoxically -- one of the first  
priority of
the MacPorts project, IMHO. There are some important changes coming with
Leopard: it has already been announced the use of XAR as the new binary
format (http://www.nabble.com/xar-in-Mac-OS-X-t2081148.html) as well as
the support for "automatic Internet download" and "new receipt tools"
(http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/sessions/index.html). Nothing more has
been divulged outside the NDA but it is clear that much work will be
required in order to interact with the new system receipt database and
to implement some form of reference counting that Mac OS X unfortunately
doesn't yet manage by itself.