yelp will not install

Ryan Schmidt ryandesign at macports.org
Sat Dec 11 16:11:49 PST 2010


On Dec 11, 2010, at 16:57, Keith J. Schultz wrote:

> Something strange happened.
> 
> I had gnome installed via macports.
> 
> I wanted to look at the docs for gnome. They are in docbook format. So I decided to install yelp!
> 
> When I executed sudo port install yelp
> port started installing a lot of port that where already installed as universals. Then it first computed the dependancies for
> yelp and said it can not install yelp because there is no i386 version of nss!
> 
> 1) I did not ask for a yelp+universal in the first place!

Nothing strange happened, though it may not be what you expected, and the implications of what happened unfortunately means you cannot use this port.

yelp only builds 32-bit -- see the line "supported_archs i386 ppc" in the portfile. I assume you're on Snow Leopard on a 64-bit-capable Mac, which means software will build x86_64 by default. So when you want to install yelp for i386, it must rebuild yelp's 64-bit dependencies universal (x86_64 plus i386).

yelp's dependency xulrunner only builds 32-bit (i386 or ppc) as well.

xulrunner's dependency nss builds for x86_64, and unfortunately has no universal variant, and the comment in the port file makes it sound like it would be difficult to add one.

The above means that xulrunner (and therefore its dependents, like yelp) cannot be installed on Snow Leopard when the build_arch is set to its default x86_64. The ticket for this is:

http://trac.macports.org/ticket/23424

nss also seems not to respect build_arch. This means that even changing build_arch to i386 will not let this port's dependents install on Snow Leopard on 64-bit-capable machines. For this issue, I have filed this ticket:

http://trac.macports.org/ticket/27644


> 2) yelps port file must be hosed! 

Nothing's hosed, unfortunately the current status quo of the related portfiles does not allow the port to be installed on 64-bit-capable Macs running Snow Leopard.



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