any way to use OS 10.3.9?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Nov 8, 2012, at 20:28, Lawrence Velázquez <larry.velazquez at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Nov 8, 2012, at 8:18 PM, David Prager Branner <brannerchinese at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I was able to install and build Macports 1.710, apparently without problems, but on the initial 
>> 
>>    sudo port -v selfupdate
>> 
>> I get what appears to be a fatal error:
>> 
>>    Command output: checking build system type... powerpc-apple-darwin7.9.0
>>    checking host system type... powerpc-apple-darwin7.9.0
>>    checking target system type... powerpc-apple-darwin7.9.0
>>    checking MacPorts version... 2.1.2
> 
> "port selfupdate" updates the ports tree, but it also tries to update MacPorts base to the latest version (currently 2.1.2). You might want to try running "port sync" instead.
> 
> http://guide.macports.org/chunked/using.html#using.port.sync

Running "sudo port sync" is out too, because that will update the ports to the current version, which will not be compatible with old versions of MacPorts. If you want to use an old version of MacPorts (which is the only option for Panther and older), you must use correspondingly old portfiles, and then never update your ports.

You can get an archive of ports from December 14, 2008, from the day MacPorts 1.7.0 was released, here:

https://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/downloads/MacPorts-1.7.0/

Using that, you could install the subversion port, then you could get somewhat newer ports from the Subversion repository. For example to check out ports from the day before 1.8.0 was released:

svn co https://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/trunk/dports -r '{2009-08-28}'

As you get newer than that, more and more ports won't work with MacPorts 1.7 because they'll contain keywords that older versions of MacPorts won't understand and will consider syntax errors. Plus, we've already been having trouble with many ports not building on Tiger, so they surely won't build on Panther either.