Compilers and Variants and Architectures Oh My!

[Lawrence Velázquez]

On Mar 25, 2013, at 6:15 PM, Jeremy Lavergne <jeremy at lavergne.gotdns.org> wrote:

>> How does one access these binaries?  I'd *much* prefer to obtain
>> binaries than compile from source on my archaic machine.
> 
> By default they get used. They're referred to as "archives" in the internals (e.g. port {archive,archivefetch,unarchive} zlib)
> 
> You can require their use with the -b flag (binary), or exclude them with -s (source):
> sudo port -b install zlib
> sudo port -s install zlib

Also, they're only available for 64-bit OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8. We have archives for the default variants of those ports that can be distributed in binary form according to their licenses. We also have archives for the +universal variants of the dependencies of i386-only ports.

When installing a port, you can tell whether a binary was used if the output shows port(1) fetching a tarball and an rmd160 signature and then jumping straight to the install phase.

vq