PHP5 development environment using older versions

[Phillip Koebbe]

On Nov 10, 2011, at 11:58 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> 
> On Nov 10, 2011, at 11:50, Phillip Koebbe wrote:
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>> Greetings all. This is my first inquiry to this list. I've just been through a somewhat painful experience and was wondering if this is the norm and if so, can anything be done to make it less painful.
> 
> 
>> All in all, I spent quite a few hours trying to figure all of this out. I'm wondering if this is basically how it goes with MacPorts and trying to use older versions of things. Is it possible to specify, in the Portfile, a minimum version of dependencies and avoid the installation of the newest versions of things, especially when an acceptable version of a dependency is already installed?
>> 
>> I apologize if this is an oft-discussed topic. I started by writing a message asking for help on how to accomplish what I needed to do, but after figuring it all out, I changed it to what it is now. In the beginning, I googled around quite a bit looking for information about setting up a PHP development environment but didn't find anything specific to using older versions of supporting libraries. The only things I found discussed PHP proper, not things like php-curl, php-imap, or php-postgresql.
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> 
> Philip,
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> Sorry you had trouble. It's not an oft-discussed topic, because most users don't want old versions, they want current versions. This is probably why it hasn't been made easier to install old versions in MacPorts.
> 
> The instructions in the wiki for installing an older version of a port are fine for dealing with just a single port. But you're talking about several ports which relate to one another. So that's a more complicated operation, which takes some work on your part, as you discovered.
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> I have to run but may have more to add in a couple hours.
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> 

Thanks for the response, Ryan. I really appreciate the attentiveness and willingness to respond.

Well, if this is how it goes, then this is how it goes. I was hopeful that I was just missing something and there might be an easier way to do it. Before I figured out the activate-deactivate trick, I was pretty confused as to how I was going to pull this off. I'm going to look into the snapshot idea offered by Jeremy.

I guess I've been a bit spoiled by RubyGems. While definitely not perfect, if you install an acceptable version of a dependency prior to the main gem you want, the newest version won't be installed. Well, I guess I should qualify that with "if the gem's dependencies are defined properly". I've had pretty decent success with maintaining older gems for legacy projects.

So I don't sound like an ungrateful snot: thank you to everyone who has worked to make MacPorts what they are. You make my life easier than it would be otherwise.

Phillip