Question about build dependencies

[Tabitha McNerney]

Ah, thanks, that makes sense -- in other words, if there is a build depends
that can already be satisfied by a build that the operating system (e.g.,
Mac OS X) provides, then it will go ahead and use that without complaining
if, at the same time, a MacPorts-supplied build is not available (e.g., it
all depends on if the binary is in the PATH).
Thanks Ryan for help in understanding this!

Best,

T.M.

On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 6:43 PM, Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org>
wrote:

> On May 28, 2008, at 22:38, Tabitha McNerney wrote:
>
>  I have what might seem to be a dumb question. I noticed today that the
>> MacPort named "libiconv" version 1.12 has a build dependency on another port
>> named gperf, specifically:
>>
>> $ port deps libiconv
>> libiconv has build dependencies on:
>>        gperf
>>
>> What I find very interesting about this situation, however, is that on my
>> MacPorts system I have not consciously built / installed the gperf port. But
>> I have successfully built and installed the libiconv port. Therefore, I am
>> wondering, how is it possible that the libiconv port was able to build and
>> install without the gperf port dependency having first been built?
>>
>
> Apparently libiconv requires gperf. I don't know anything about this;
> that's the way the port was when I inherited it.
>
> The dependency is declared like this:
>
> depends_build \
>        bin:gperf:gperf
>
> That means if a binary (the "bin" part) called "gperf" (the first "gperf"
> part) does not exist on the computer, then install the gperf port (the 2nd
> "gperf" part).
>
> On my Tiger system, a gperf binary is provided by Mac OS X in
> /usr/bin/gperf so the gperf port does not need to be installed.
>
> Usually ports depend on other ports only. In this case, the previous
> maintainer of libiconv must've thought the gperf provided by Mac OS X was
> sufficient. I don't even know what gperf does.
>
>
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