Migration question and binary question

[Ryan Schmidt]

On May 8, 2014, at 16:35, Jerry wrote:

> I just upgraded my OS to 10.9 from 10.8 and am following the instructions for migrating MacPorts at https://trac.macports.org/wiki/Migration.
> 
> I am considering using the "Automatically reinstall ports" suggestion whereby a script is downloaded which script then works with a previously saved myports.txt. If I do this, will the script install old versions of ports which had not been active? I'm thinking that this might be a good time to do some decrufting and I would like to consider these old inactive versions as mostly cruft and not reinstall them.

MacPorts doesn't have the capability to automatically install older versions; it can only install the current version. There is a manual method for installing older ports, but this is probably a good time to clean up and only install the current versions of ports you need.


> Also, I've been confused about binary versions--are there binary versions of some ports and if so I would like to install them preferentially over building from source. How do I discover the presence of a binary port and how do I install it?

MacPorts automatically checks for the existence of a binary and uses it if available. If not, it builds from source. There is no MacPorts command to determine in advance whether a binary is available. You can browse the directories at http://packages.macports.org if you want to investigate. Eventually I want to make this information more easily discoverable on the MacPorts web site.