port installation failing

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Apr 19, 2012, at 13:40, Chris Ramos wrote:

> To whom it may concern,
> 
> I'm considering the daunting task of removing macports due to frustration and time constraints. Frankly, I'm not even sure what I did wrong, but I recently found myself needing to reinstall octave. I was initially using the standalone package, but tossed it due to a failure to call gnuplot. So, I tossed the stand alone gnuplot and aquaterm as well. I believe that installing octave through macports would also make it automatically install gnuplot and aquaterm.
> 
> I already had macports installed, but I tried to reinstall because I thought I had too due to updating xcode. However, I now use filevault, which means macports couldn't be installed in my user folder, which I think means I now have multiple copies of macports installed.
> 
> When trying to install octave I get this:
> 
> sudo port install octave-devel +gcc45
> --->  Computing dependencies for gettext
> --->  Dependencies to be installed: ncurses
> --->  Activating ncurses @5.9_1
> Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: Image error: /opt/local/bin/captoinfo is being used by the active ncursesw port.  Please deactivate this port first, or use 'port -f activate ncurses' to force the activation.
> Error: Failed to install ncurses
> Log for ncurses is at: /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_tarballs_ports_devel_ncurses/ncurses/main.log
> Error: The following dependencies were not installed: ncurses
> Error: Unable to upgrade port: 1
> Error: Unable to execute port: upgrade flex failed
> To report a bug, see <http://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets>

ncursesw was replaced by ncurses a long time ago. You must not have updated this MacPorts installation in over a year; if you had upgraded sooner, this should have been handled more automatically for you but we've already removed those upgrade paths since it was so long ago and we thought everybody would have upgraded by now. You can just force ncursesw to uninstall since it's no longer needed:

sudo port -f uninstall ncursesw


> I tried activating ncurses and got this:
> port -f activate ncurses
> Error: Insufficient privileges to write to MacPorts install prefix.
> 
> I tried removing ncurses and I got this:
> --->  The following versions of ncurses are currently installed:
> --->      ncurses @5.7_0+darwin_10
> --->      ncurses @5.9_1
> 
> 
> 
> Does anyone have any clue how to help me? Any help would be appreciated.

Of course you would need to use "sudo" for anything that changes the contents of the MacPorts prefix:

sudo port -f activate ncurses

But after you uninstall ncursesw as above, you shouldn't have to force the activation of ncurses.