Error installing rdiff-backup

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Aug 17, 2009, at 22:03, Scott Haneda wrote:

> On Aug 17, 2009, at 7:10 PM, S. M. Ibrahim (Lavlu) wrote:
>
>> looks like /opt/local/bin/xattr is also used by another port xattr,
>> and that port is already active. that's why you are getting this
>> message. you can active manualy py25-xattr by "sudo port -f activate
>> py25-xattr"
>
> It would be nice if ports could print out the versions in cases lke  
> this. If they are equal, maybe it could just move along. A simple  
> "yes, I want to overwrite", or a "no, I want to abort", could be a  
> nice way of dealing with this.

That doesn't sound practical to me. Are you talking about the  
versions of the ports? If so, port xattr is version 0.1 while port  
py25-xattr is version 0.5. Or did you mean the versions of the xattr  
program installed by both? There isn't any standard for figuring out  
a program's version, and besides, the conflicting file might not be a  
program; it might be a manpage or a header file or any other type of  
file.

Even if they are the same version, by whatever criteria, how do you  
know they are the same software? Ok, maybe you compute a checksum of  
both files and discover they're identical. Ok, so then you allow,  
say, py25-xattr to install without its xattr file and have it make  
use of the xattr file provided by the xattr port. But no dependency  
has been declared on the xattr port. What happens if now the user  
uninstalls the xattr port? The py25-xattr port stops working.


No, I think our current strategy for this type of situation is fine.  
Ideally there should be only one port that installs a given file.  
Ports that violate this get tickets filed and assigned to both  
maintainers so they can sort it out. Ports that can't fix such a  
conflict will (as of MacPorts 1.8) be marked as conflicting in the  
portfiles.