Replacing a variant with many dependencies

[Freek Dijkstra]

Ryan Schmidt replied:

[...]
>> To test, I wanted to first uninstall the current python27, but that
>> fails because it has some dependencies. "Some" turned out 117
>> dependencies as reported by `port rdependents python27`.
>>
>> Is there a simple way to deactivate them and activate later? Or if that
>> is not good enough, uninstall and install them later, without
>> maintaining a list by hand?
> 
> To test this, you can simply deactivate your existing python27.
> 
> sudo port -f deactivate python27

Thanks; the force deactivation was the tip I was looking for. I somehow
was focussing on the dependencies instead of the main program.

Unfortunately, my problem remains. I used a Linux system for now, so I'm
OK for now. I'll have a look later and file a bugreport at the MacPorts
site. (a quick search only gave a related issues with Python 2.6, but
did not give me a solution).

Mostly I first have to figure out what Python's "destroot" is doing in
the first place. I would only expect /usr/bin/install and chmod
commands, but I also see lines starting with "Compiling ..." in the
debug output. Perhaps that's just "compiling" .py to .pyc. The error was
caused by a command starting with "../python.exe
./scripts/BuildApplet.py", which makes me suspicious (running a build
script in the destroot phase?)

>> While I'm at it: has anyone successfully installed python +ucs4? (I'm
>> trying to determine if I can avoid this bug by doing a clean install or
>> not).
> 
> On my Snow Leopard x86_64 system, I have no trouble installing
> python27 +ucs4 +universal even when python27 +universal is already
> installed.

Thanks. I got the same problem on two machines. Not really surprising,
since they have rougly the same MacPorts. It is encouraging to know it
can be done :)

Perhaps it's a Lion issue.

Thanks,
Freek