Manually stepping through port phases

[Joshua Root]

On 2010-6-15 11:35 , Scott Webster wrote:
> Looking for some pointers for sequentially stepping through the
> different port phases... The reason I want to do this is to test a
> change to a package (modify the source), so I figured I would do the
> following:
> 
> port fetch gimp2
> port extract gimp2
> *make my changes*
> port patch gimp2
> port configure gimp2
> port build gimp2
> port destroot gimp2
> port install gimp2
> port activate gimp2
> 
> It looks like what happened is that everything was fine up until the
> "port install" command and it seems that then port decided I didn't
> need to install after all and wiped out the destroot through it's
> cleaning process.  This is likely because I already have gimp2
> installed I guess... but is there a way to make "port install" only do
> the "install" phase (as defined in the macports guide as "Copy a
> port's destrooted files into ${prefix}/var/macports/software.")?

You can't install a port with a name/version/revision/variants tuple
that is already installed. The install target will just return having
done nothing.

If you don't want the work dir to be cleaned after install, turn
portautoclean off.

While install and activate are separate targets internally, the install
*action* implemented by port(1) runs both targets. I can't really think
of a situation where you would need to run install only.

- Josh