Problem installing KDE/Amarok

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jun 24, 2009, at 13:05, Hal Vaughan wrote:

> I just installed MacPorts yesterday.  I'm trying to install Amarok  
> and yesterday I typed "sudo port install amarok" yesterday.  It  
> took qt hours to build.  Last night, when I got home about 9 pm,  
> the terminal was not responding and clicking it gave me the  
> spinning pinwheel.  I can't scroll or anything.  Ports has a  
> message displayed: Installing kdebase4-runtime @4.2.4_0."  It's  
> been at that stage since 9 pm last night (it's now about 2 pm the  
> next day).  The terminal is locked up and I don't know if it's  
> still building KDE and installing or if it's locked up.
>
> I've asked for help on #kde-mac, but with 20 people in that group,  
> nobody seems active.
>
> I don't know if I should kill the terminal and therefore the ports  
> process or if it just takes that long.  My guess is that KDE is big  
> and it takes a lot of time and may take notable CPU resources, thus  
> locking up the terminal for a while.  If that's so, I can deal with  
> it, but for now, I can't run another instance of Terminal unless I  
> reboot, and I don't know if restarting the port command will just  
> put me in the same fix before.
>
> I'm on an iMac with OS X 10.5.7, a 2.4 Ghz Intel 2 core CPU with 4  
> GB of 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM.  Not the latest, but no slouch either.   
> Does it take over 17 hours to install KDE with such a system?
>
> Also I know that there are messages of commands I have to run on  
> the terminal, but I only see a few, so I don't know if rebooting  
> will mean I can't access any that have scrolled off the top yet.

Hmm. First, welcome to MacPorts!

qt4-mac does take hours to build, even on a nice system like that.  
KDE probably also takes hours, but that time should mostly be taken  
in the build phase. Once it reaches the installation phase, the port  
isn't even in control; MacPorts base is, and all it's doing is  
copying the contents of /opt/local/var/macports/build/(PORT)/work/ 
destroot into /opt/local/var/macports/software/(PORT)/(VERSION)_ 
(REVISION)_(VARIANTS). kdebase4-runtime could add something to that  
with a pre-install or post-install phase, but that port doesn't have  
one. In any case, I don't think the Terminal app itself should ever  
become unresponsive, no matter how much work MacPorts is doing. So  
I'm afraid something has gone wrong. If you cannot interact with the  
Terminal, you'll have to force-quit it or restart the computer as you  
said. Unfortunately, MacPorts does not save the output of its build  
progress, so if there are messages scrolled off the top that you  
cannot see or scroll up to now, they are lost.

After restarting Terminal or the computer, you can try again. You can  
use the "-d" flag ("port -d install amarok") to get a lot more  
information printed out. This will let you see what exactly a port  
was doing if and when it gets hung up. On the other hand, the vast  
quantity of output you will get means you will very likely miss any  
"you must do this after installing the port"-type messages that some  
ports print.