Binary builds???

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Nov 19, 2011, at 02:46, Marko Käning wrote:

> How can I verify whether my setup is capable or not to use the new binary installs?

Try to install a port for which you see that an archive is available at http://packages.macports.org. Does the archive get downloaded and used? Then you are capable of using binaries.


On Nov 19, 2011, at 03:19, Marko Käning wrote:

> That's funny, I've got one MacPorts installation which now uses the binary install method and I've got another MacPorts installation which obviously doesn't use it, although the macports.conf's are seemingly more or less identical.
> 
> What are the *necessary* settings to allow binary installs?

I don't know the complete list of requirements. Archive type tbz2 is necessary as you found, as are the conditions I mentioned earlier. Also if you've compiled MacPorts in a different prefix than /opt/local you can't get the binaries. If you have applications_dir or frameworks_dir set differently than the defaults, you'll still get the binaries, but applications and frameworks will go in their default locations, not your changed locations; we need to fix that, maybe by disabling binaries if you've changed applications_dir or frameworks_dir. There is a ticket.


On Nov 19, 2011, at 03:44, Marko Käning wrote:

> And it looks like port ALWAYS DOWNLOADS the tbz2 file from the server, even if it had done that previously.
> Is there no caching for binary files like it is done for tarballs?

My observation is that the archive that's downloaded takes the place of the one you would have otherwise compiled. Uninstalling the port deletes the archive (whether you built it or it got downloaded). Reinstalling the port requires downloading (or building) the archive again.