General question about MacPorts

[Daniel J. Luke]

On Mar 5, 2008, at 12:27 PM, Wilden Mark wrote:
> A couple of days ago, I posted about the inability to build
> mod_python. There appears to be a problem building apr-1.2.12, which
> mod_python and others (like Subversion) depend on. A ticket was added
> for this (#14470).

Sorry, I didn't notice this ticket (as it wasn't assigned or CC'd to  
me), and I'm the  maintainer of the apr port.

It looks like your issue is a duplicate of #14203 (it's a conflict  
with ossp-uuid) and you should be able to get things working by  
temporarily deactivating ossp-uuid, rebuilding apr, and then  
activating ossp-uuid after you get it installed. [There's more  
detailed information in the ticket].

> My questions are these:
>
> 1) Would this be considered a non-priority problem?

no.

> Is it common for
> MacPorts to be unable to build vitally important tools like mod_python
> and subversion?

'vitally important' is in the eye of the user ;-)

Ports with a maintainer should all build (at least most of the time),  
but there are many ports without a current maintainer that may or may  
not have been tested recently.

> 2) If that's in fact the case, what are the alternatives, if someone
> (like me) has been using MacPorts for other things? It appears (to
> this newbie) that you can't tell MacPorts, "hey, you don't need to
> build this - I built it myself," so it doesn't consider that it has a
> missing dependency.

By design, you can't do this. The rational for why is on website.

Modifying portfiles isn't hard, however, so it's often easier to fix  
the macports port (and submit a patch so others can benefit) than  
building and managing things by hand by yourself.

> 3) Is MacPorts really just a convenience, and not something that one
> should depend on?

That's something you have to determine for yourself. Macports is a  
volunteer project. I'm sure if you wanted to pay someone to make sure  
everything that's important to you kept working, you could ;-)

> Mr. Mod_Python (Graham Dumpleton) recommends not
> using it, for example.

That's interesting, and I would be curious as to why that would be the  
case.

--
Daniel J. Luke
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