macports-users Digest, Vol 66, Issue 27

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Feb 29, 2012, at 17:47, Ollie Oberg wrote:
> 
> I've had a few similar problems installing under Leopard.  "shell command failed" errors often were the result of something going wrong with pkg-config.

In MacPorts, "shell command failed" basically means "an error occurred". Nothing more specific than that. Consult the log for more details.

> I would recommend trying to install xfig from source (if available) and seeing what the output is from that.  It may give you a clue as to where the problem lies. 

Why not just consult the MacPorts main.log file?