MacPorts Statistics (was Re: usage numbers for macports vs. homebrew?)

[Clemens Lang]

Hi Craig,

> As I understand it, the statistics process arose
> in GSOC 11, right?  Is it pretty much as
> described at:
> 
> […]
> 
> Is the above accurate?  I understand that Popcon
> tracks the last access time (atime) for files in
> a port and that our implementation does not.

Yes, that's correct.


> From what I can see, our tool will not gather
> whether a port was Requested or not.  I think
> that's a key data point.  Some libs will get
> installed very frequently as dependencies but
> will seldom be requested.

That's actually correct as far as I know, yes. The submission script currently tells the server whether a port is active or inactive, but not whether it was requested. We should add that.


> Also, this is implemented as a weekly launchd
> job.  What happens if there is a problem
> somewhere between the users machine and the
> server receiving the data?  Does the user job
> abort gracefully? Try again?

The job aborts gracefully and will run again next week.

> What is the user
> wants to get rid of MacPorts and deletes
> /opt/local/*.  My experience is that launchd will
> _never_ stop trying to run the missing job and
> will spam the Console log with complaints about
> it.

The files installed by MacPorts in /Library/LaunchDaemons are usually symlinks. If you nuke /opt/local, launchd won't be able to find the plist and can't run the job. I don't know whether that leaves any log messages.


> Do we have a sample statistics page for a port/all ports?

http://stats.macports.neverpanic.de/

-- 
Clemens Lang