How does Macport work?

[Scott Haneda]

On Jun 10, 2009, at 4:06 PM, Fon Vitale wrote:

> Ok. Thank you, but I don't understand why Macports installs things  
> which are installed. I made the question because I need a program to  
> make diagrams, so I run:
>
> sudo port -v install dia
>
> One of the dependences of the dependences is perl5.8 and Macports  
> needs install it, but perl5.8 is alredy installed in my computer (a  
> Macbook).

Because macports has no way of knowing that your perl5.8 is the one  
that will work.  At least with dia knowing it needs perl5.8, and  
knowing that the maintainer had to build it with macports perl5.8,  
that much is known to more than likely work.

Apple's installed perl, may or may not work, and may or may not be  
updated.  What if apple releases perl 6, nukes perl 5, then your dia  
would stop working.

> Coming back whit the C compiler example, if Macports installs the  
> compiler when I run it what compiler is being running: Macports  
> installed or prior Macports one?


Whatever one is listed first when you run
	 echo $PATH
in your terminal.

Hope that helps.
-- 
Scott * If you contact me off list replace talklists@ with scott@ *