Ports and their dependencies (run deps and also versioning questions)

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jun 9, 2008, at 11:23, Tabitha McNerney wrote:

> This may sound like a dumb question, but what would be a suggested  
> way to discover if Apple / Mac OS X is provided the same or similar  
> library for a non-port library dependency of type lib: (e.g.  
> depends_lib: lib:libogg)? In the case of a bin: type I can easily  
> do something like:
>
> $ which perl
>
> Easy as pie. Is there a command similar to "which" that can be  
> passed the name of a library from a MacPorts file such as "libogg"  
> written above? A program such as libtool? Which would come back  
> with info definitively yes or no about the library name collision?  
> I suppose I could also dig for it in /usr/lib but it would be nice  
> to have something like "which" for libraries as part of my MacPorts  
> quality control script.

Why do you want to know? :-)

As a general rule, if you're writing a port that has dependencies on  
other libraries, declare the dependency on other MacPorts ports.  
There's no need to investigate which libraries might already be  
provided with the version of Mac OS X you happen to have on your  
computer because it might be different in other versions on Mac OS X  
which is why we try to use only other MacPorts ports so we know what  
we're getting.