uninstall dependents

[Lawrence Velázquez]

On Nov 9, 2012, at 8:08 AM, "M. Daniel Becque" <mdbecque at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am confused what "port uninstall --follow-dependents <portfile>" or is it "--follow-dependencies" will uninstall?

These are two separate flags that do two separate things.

> For example, if I enter "port dependents inkscape", Macports replies there are no dependents. On the other hand, "port deps inkscape" lists a large number of library dependents and some build dependents of inkscape e.g. poppler and perl5.

If port A requires port B, then:

    - Port A is a *dependent* of port B.
    - Port B is a *dependency* of port A.

In your case, no ports require Inkscape, so Inkscape has no dependents. On the other hand, Inkscape itself requires many ports; these ports are Inkscape's dependencies.

> So what will the follow flag do when it is executed; try to uninstall all the library and build dependents or just uninstall inkscape?

"port uninstall --follow-dependencies inkscape" would uninstall Inkscape and its library and runtime dependencies. However, it would not uninstall any ports that had other dependents or that were marked as requested (either with "port setrequested" or through "port install").

"port uninstall --follow-dependents inkscape" would uninstall Inkscape and all ports that had Inkscape as a library or runtime dependency, as well as the recursive dependents of *those* ports.

vq