dealing with ports that can't upgrade

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jun 21, 2008, at 4:12 PM, paul beard wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 2:08 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>> On Jun 21, 2008, at 3:19 PM, paul beard wrote:
>>
>>> So I have this problem where I can't upgrade metacity until I get  
>>> Leopard. Is there a way to have MacPorts simply ignore you don't  
>>> want upgraded or that can't be upgraded? Something as simple as  
>>> a .ignore file in the port directory or an entry in a list in  
>>> ports.conf . . .
>>
>> There is no such feature at this time.
>
>
> I suspected not: I'll make an RFE.

Do we really want people ignoring available upgrades? I don't think  
that's a good feature to add.


>>> In the case of metacity and other ports similarly situated, why  
>>> not an OS version test, if it's confirmed that Tiger is not  
>>> suitable build platform?
>>
>> If the current version of metacity will not be fixed to work on  
>> pre-Leopard, then the port should error out on pre-Leopard OS  
>> versions, and the last Tiger-compatible version of metacity should  
>> be resurrected from the repository and reinstated as a separate port.
>
>
> I am actually working my way through that: looks like 2.21.2 works,  
> where 2.22 fails.
>
>> But if the current metacity can be fixed to work on pre-Leopard,  
>> then that should be done instead.
>
>
> That sounds like a lot of work: something to do with X.org stuff  
> that is leopard-specific. Seems to me that erroring out based on OS  
> version is the cleanest way to go forward.

OK. Then something like this can be added to the metacity port:


platform darwin 7 {
	pre-fetch {
		return -code error "${name} requires Mac OS X 10.5 or newer."
	}
}
platform darwin 8 {
	pre-fetch {
		return -code error "${name} requires Mac OS X 10.5 or newer."
	}
}


However, this will not prevent the port from showing up in the list  
of outdated ports, and it will not enable Tiger users to install the  
older version. For that, the older version of metacity would need to  
be broken out into a new port.