OSX Upgrades: Snow Leopard

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jun 15, 2009, at 17:05, Darren Weber wrote:

>> MacPorts doesn't include a command to help you rebuild an entire  
>> installation like this. This is unfortunate and makes it a rather  
>> involved process. But since upgrading to a new major OS version is  
>> a task users don't perform often, I don't think any work has gone  
>> into making this easier.
>>
>>
>> I think the key to solving this would be to have MacPorts record  
>> more information in the registry about each port that was  
>> installed, including what version of Mac OS X it was done on, with  
>> what version of Xcode, and even record several of the settings  
>> from macports.conf that were in effect at the time. Then we can  
>> make "port outdated" recognize that if the current OS is a major  
>> version later than the one a port was installed with, the port  
>> needs to be rebuilt.
>>
>
> Interesting suggestion.  Does the receipt include the variants  
> installed?

Yes; you can bunzip2 a port's receipt and look at it in a text editor  
if you want to see what's in it. But all it seems to contain now is  
the variants that were selected, the files that got installed, and  
some info copied out of the portfile, including its name, version,  
revision, description, etc.

> Is this process likely to be available in 1.8?

I wouldn't count on it, since it's just an idea at this point, and  
there has been no code written yet. And we do want to get 1.8 out the  
door quickly now, since Snow Leopard is in developer hands, and it  
requires 1.8.

Just getting the info (Mac OS X version, Xcode version, build machine  
arch, universal archs, etc?) stored in the receipt shouldn't be hard  
and could perhaps occur for 1.8 already. And then later we can  
rewrite "port outdated" so it makes use of this information.