Should root have a gcc/clang port as a lib dependency?

Jean-François Caron jfcaron at phas.ubc.ca
Mon Sep 23 10:01:59 PDT 2013


Hi, I use the root port for my work, and I was surprised this morning that everything stopped working after I did a cleanup of all my "leaves" ports.  root is used as a C++ interpreter, but it also trivially can be used to compile programs that use its libraries (usually by adding a + to a command string).  Apparently when it is used to compile stuff, the compiler that was used to compile root is called.

My root was compiled with clang-3.2, but this is listed only as a build dependency, not a lib dependency.  I got reasonably informative error messages ("/opt/local/bin/clang++-mp-3.2: No such file or directory"), but I am wondering if maybe the compiler should be listed as something other than a build directory, given that compiling root macros and programs is a pretty standard functionality of root.  I.e. root without a proper compiler is basically broken.  

My solution was to add clang-3.2 as a requested port, but really I only use it via root, so this feels un-MacPorts-like to me.  Adding the compiler as a lib dependency doesn't feel really appropriate either, since it's not being used as a library, but rather is called externally.  Perhaps experts can chime in about how they feel?

Jean-François



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