port won't upgrade

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Aug 13, 2013, at 18:37, Clemens Lang wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 04:01:53PM -0500, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>> You've run into a peculiar feature of MacPorts. You have 3.10.2_1
>> installed, MacPorts knows there's a newer version 3.10.2_2 available
>> so it shows it to you in "port outdated", but MacPorts thinks there's
>> nothing to upgrade because you've already installed 3.10.2_2, even
>> though it's disabled and using a different variant.
> 
> I have previously seen this behavior and have always wondered whether
> this is a bug or a feature. Can you enlighten me whether this is
> expected behavior or just a gray area where we have decided the current
> behavior is "good enough"?

I don't know but it seems useful in the following scenario: Let's say you have foo @1.4_0 installed and "port outdated" tells you foo @1.5_0 is available so you "sudo port upgrade outdated" which deactivates foo @1.4_0 and installs and activates foo @1.5_0. If foo @1.5_0 works for you then you would presumably uninstall foo @1.4_0 sometime later, but let's say foo @1.5_0 doesn't work for you. Maybe it contains a bug that's critical to you. So you want to downgrade. You "sudo port activate foo @1.4_0". foo @1.5_0 stays installed, it's just not active. "port outdated" tells you your foo is out of date, but you already know that and don't want to upgrade until the bug is fixed. You can still run "sudo port upgrade outdated" and MacPorts will upgrade any other outdated ports, just not foo, since it sees you've deliberately re-activated an older version. Later, when foo @1.5.1_0 is released which contains the bugfix, "sudo port upgrade outdated" will upgrade your foo again.