please help

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jul 17, 2010, at 22:33, Zachary Gottlieb wrote:

> I am not a programmer, but I was directed to Macports by a photography program called "Hugin." I was advised in the help section to download "autopano-sift-C" via Macports, and since then I have run into trouble. I have no idea how to run the so-called port command in order to download/apply the portfile for autopano-sift-C. If this is easy enough for a somewhat tech-savvy amateur to do, I would really appreciate advice on how to proceed. 
> 
> Either way, downloading Macports added a ton of files to my computer, most of which I probably won't need. Once the application has been installed, will it be necessary to keep all of the components of Macport on my computer? Whether or not it would, I would be very grateful for any advice on how to uninstall Macport and all of these components entirely. 

Welcome to MacPorts!


Once MacPorts is installed, which it sounds like you've done, you can install a port like autopano-sift-c by simply typing:

sudo port install autopano-sift-c

into a window of the Terminal program. (The Terminal is located in /Applications/Utilities.) It will ask you to supply your Mac OS X account password, which it needs in order to have access to make changes to your disk, and then it will install all of autopano-sift-c's dependencies followed by autopano-sift-c itself. If you want to see where things got installed, you can type:

port contents autopano-sift-c


Hugin itself is available in MacPorts too. To install it (and first install autopano-sift-c and any other dependencies it may have), you would type:

sudo port install hugin-app

I discovered that this port was available by typing

port search hugin

You can use "port search" to find other software you may want.


There is a guide that explains more about how to use MacPorts. Some of it is geared toward portfile authors and developers and so is not of relevance to you at this time, but the beginning parts of it address how to use MacPorts to install software, which is what you want. You can read the guide here:

http://guide.macports.org/


You will want to keep MacPorts itself installed, so that in the future you can upgrade or uninstall things. If you change your mind and want to remove MacPorts and all software you installed with it, instructions for that are in the guide too:

http://guide.macports.org/#installing.macports.uninstalling


Feel free to ask other questions here; we're happy to help.