Policy concerning ports that can update/install themselves

[Bryan Blackburn]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:39:26AM +0100, Emmanuel Hainry said:
> Dear all,
> 
> I am wondering what is our policy concerning programs that are able
> either to auto update (many graphical programs have such a feature) and
> programs that propose to install add-ons like py-setuptools,
> rb-rubygems...
> 
> Those are able to write things inside ${prefix} and to put there files
> that are not managed by Macports and hence may cause problems for
> subsequent port installs/uninstall but also write things outside
> ${prefix}, including /usr/.

Like you notice, this can cause issues if the updated version installs new
files or removes current files, since what MacPorts thinks is installed is
now incorrect.  If it only changed already-installed files, then this would
not be quite a big problem.

However, then the MacPorts information would be incorrect as things like
'port installed xyz' would show version 1.1 installed but the auto-update
changed that to 1.2.  Confusion then ensues...

> 
> I ask this question because of one of texlive's new feature: a graphical
> interface that manages the configuration but also gives the user the
> ability to add packages. My choice would be to disable such an evil
> feature as port is supposed to do the work, but I see that ports for
> such feature in python and ruby exist...


If it's easily disabled, it would make sense to do so.  Otherwise, I
wouldn't expect maintainers to go through lots of work patching code to
disable it.  Perhaps simplest is a FAQ entry on the wiki saying that using
in-app update functionality is not supported by MacPorts and to use at your
own risk.

Bryan


> 
> Best,
> 
> Emmanuel