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

[Tabitha McNerney]

Hello all --

I'm writing a little Ruby script that parses through my list of installed
MacPorts. When I find a port that is installed, the script will
automatically run the port command to get its dependencies as in:

$ port deps Xft2 @2.1.12_0
> Xft2 has build dependencies on:
>     pkgconfig
> Xft2 has library dependencies on:
>     xorg-xproto
>     zlib
>     xrender
>     freetype
>     fontconfig
>     expat
>


The MacPorts documentation says there are three types of dependencies:
build, library and run. In the example above of Xft2, we see build and
library dependencies listed out on the command line.  I have yet to run
across a port that also say it has run dependencies. Are there any example
of such ports? I just want to make sure that I am parsing the output
correctly so a test example would be helpful.

Also, on a related note, let's say we run this command, whereby we specify
the precise version of Xft2 (2.1.12_0):

$ port deps Xft2 @2.1.12_0
>

(since we might have installed more than one version of the Xft2 port but
only one of which is the active port). I observe that, even when specifying
the exact version of a port, its dependencies are still dumped out with
their general names, rather than both their names and version numbers. Hmmm
... so what if we have two Xft2 version on our system, such as: 2.1.12_0 and
2.2 (I'm making this up for demonstration purposes only) and let's say that
the active version of Xft2 is 2.1.12_0. Now, what if Xft2 2.1.12_0 has a
library dependency of zlib 1.2.3_1, but Xft2 2.2 has a library dependency of
zlib 1.3 (again I'm making this up for demo purposes). Do we have any way of
finding out? Even the Portfiles themselves don't specify dependency
versions, for example from the Xft2 port file:

depends_lib \
>         port:xorg-xproto \
>         port:zlib \
>         port:xrender \
>         port:freetype \
>         port:fontconfig \
>         port:expat
>


Is this purely a matter of the active port (Xft2) will only successfully
install (and capable of being activated) based on whatever versions are of
its (library, build, run) dependencies at the moment it is installed?

Thank you,

T.M.
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