macports and Xcode

[Jay Levitt]

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> nox wrote:
> 
>>> One reason could be to keep MacPorts fully "self-contained",
>>> and to cut down on the amount of "outside" dependencies... ?
>>> Currently there is a big grey zone of what's ok to use from
>>> system (GCC, X11, etc) and what is not (Perl, Python, etc)
> 
>> I really don't want to have to build or use a bootstrapped GCC, X11  
>> and all to have a self-contained
>> MacPorts installation.
> 
> Right, and some people don't want to build or use a bootstrapped
> Perl or Python or Ruby (or even Apache or MySQL or PHP packages)
> 
> So it's all about trade-offs... But I agree with you, and the only
> reason I could see for bootstrapping cctools/gcc or Xquartz would
> be to make sure that it builds from the available open source code
> instead of just using the binaries. Otherwise not worth the hassle.

Another factor (though I think we're just discussing philosphy, not 
immediate plans): Every port maintainer and core developer uses Xcode.  We 
already see lots of problems when a package doesn't work on 10.5 because the 
port maintainer didn't upgrade - or when it stops working on 10.4 because he 
did.

Adding a new build system, if it ever becomes a Good Idea, ought to be 
coupled with some type of continuous-integration "build farm" so that 
platform-specific bugs don't get (further) introduced.

Jay Levitt