ASSP out of date

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Nov 9, 2008, at 03:57, Scott Haneda wrote:

> On Nov 9, 2008, at 1:02 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>> You don't need to install any ports; all ports' portfiles are  
>> already on your computer. Just go to the dports directory and grep  
>> through them. Portfiles are always in a directory for the port,  
>> which is in a directory for the group. So in the dports directory,  
>> "*/*/Portfile" gets all portfiles.
>
> Cool, thanks, the more I learn about this whole ports system, the  
> more well thought out I think it is.  I think I lot of people are  
> put off by the whole /opt/local/ part of the path.  I get it, you  
> want stuff totally away from the Apple stuff, since they tend to  
> have a nasty habit of nuking stuff.

People shouldn't be put off by /opt/local. If they would prefer  
MacPorts be in a different prefix, they can recompile MacPorts to be  
there. For example, I use /mp (because it's shorter, and because it  
lets me find broken ports that assume MacPorts will be in /opt/ 
local). But users must not set their MacPorts prefix to an existing  
system directory like / or /usr, and they must not use /usr/local  
either (this will cause a rift in the space-time continuum).


> (And nice way of dealing with launchd, I was wondering about that,  
> seems like a solid plan)

And it degrades nicely on 10.3 and earlier, using SystemStarter  
instead of launchd.


> What I do not get is how much support there is for apt-get and yet,  
> in my experience, mention darwin ports, or now, mac ports to a mac  
> user, and they cringe a little for some reason.

Well... We need to release 1.7.0 to fix the outstanding bugs that  
many new users get annoyed by. The 1.6.0 installer doesn't properly  
setup your environment, and on Leopard there's a bug that causes  
multi-port installs to fail often, with inexplicable error messages.  
Once we release 1.7.0, these will just work. That will help.

Another bit is that this is the Terminal, and Mac users tend not to  
like the Terminal. There are a number of attempts at GUIs for  
MacPorts, though I have not evaluated them.

A further bit is that users need to install Xcode, which is for  
programmers, which is something most Mac users don't want to be  
called. It's also a huge download. And it takes time to compile  
software. Mac users would much rather MacPorts downloaded binaries  
instead of source which must then be compiled. This is a long (long  
long) term goal, I think.


> I am not entirely sure why, so far, in my experience, it is pretty  
> nice, there just need to be more ports is all.  Certainly beats the  
> mess of questions cpan asks of others, most of which I have no idea  
> how to answer.

Thank you! Perl's (CPAN's?) installation questions stress me out too.


> Curious, why not just hide /opt/local so people do not get so  
> strange about it, then it is like any of the other binaries people  
> use and have no idea where they reside.  Or am I alone in that the  
> circles I travel in, people are a little weary of macports for some  
> reason?

Since as long as I can remember, I've used TinkerTool to show all  
hidden items in the Finder. So I don't have any idea anymore what's  
usually hidden. Users could certainly hide /opt/local if they so  
desired; I believe these instructions should work (if you replace "/ 
sw" with "/opt/local"):

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050503183616515

Someone could test this theory, and if it works, write up a nice  
article on the MacPorts wiki! Would go well in the how-to section.


>> For example, try:
>>
>> cd $(port dir MacPorts)/../.. && grep fs-traverse */*/Portfile
>
>
> Thats one heck of a one liner :)
> So fs-traverse seems to be a easy way to iterate a set of files, I  
> will play a little more with it later tonight or tomorrow.

Exactly!