Activate never completes

[William Davis]

On Sep 21, 2007, at 4:08 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

>
> On Sep 18, 2007, at 16:04, Michael D. Johas Teener wrote:
>
>> The last few installs that I have attempted have hung during the  
>> activate
>> phase ... I have terminated the processes and tried an explicit  
>> activate
>> command, but that hangs, too. Now I have a number of intalled-but- 
>> inactive
>> ports hanging around. For instance:
>>
>> mikes-brcm-mbp:~ mikejt$ port installed
>> The following ports are currently installed:
>>   aquaterm @1.0.1_0+darwin_8
>>   expat @2.0.0_1
>>   expat @2.0.1_0 (active)
>>   fontconfig @2.4.2_0+macosx
>>   freetype @2.3.5_0
>>   gawk @3.1.5_2 (active)
>>   gettext @0.14.6_0
>>   gettext @0.16.1_0 (active)
>>   libiconv @1.10_1+darwin_8
>>   libiconv @1.11_4+darwin_8 (active)
>>   libpcap @0.9.5_1 (active)
>>   pkgconfig @0.22_0+universal (active)
>>   XFree86 @4.7.0_0+macosx (active)
>>   zlib @1.2.3_1 (active)
>> mikes-brcm-mbp:~ mikejt$ sudo port activate freetype
>> --->  Activating freetype
>>
>> Then nothing ... just dead air .. same thing if I try to activate  
>> aquaterm
>> ...
>
> Please try with debug and verbose output.
>
> sudo port -dv activate freetype
>
> Either it will show that something is progressing, though slowly,  
> in which case let it go, or it will hang at one spot, and if so,  
> show us the last few lines.

had similar problems. I did a little more testing and found this: if  
for some reason a port is installed but cant be activated (call it  
foo), then after that every time you try to update all outdated , the  
message "Activating foo"  will appear up to five times along with any  
other update messages.  On some occasions, an infinite loop will  
occur with tclsh8.4  opening sh which opens tclsh8.4 which open  
another sh which opens another ...... well you see what I mean.

You can reproduce this situation artificialy by doing a new macports  
install, installing 1 aqua item then deleting /opt/local but not / 
applications/MacPorts.  Reinstall macports and try to install the  
same aqua item.  It will fail. then do an update outdated or activate  
foo  and you will eventually see the bug.

hope this is useful trouble shooting info