Scripts Requiring a MacPorts Version (was Re: Troubles using port_binary_distributable.tcl)

[Ryan Schmidt]

On May 20, 2014, at 21:52, Jeremy Lavergne wrote:

> On May 20, 2014, at 22:45, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> 
>> On May 20, 2014, at 19:56, Jeremy Lavergne wrote:
>> 
>>> Is this something we should have the scripts check before running? If the MacPorts version is newer than they’re expecting, demand the user download a fresh copy.
>> 
>> This seems like overkill to me. Most MacPorts releases haven't made the types of internal changes that were made in 2.3.0 that cause changes in scripts to be necessary.
> 
> Do our version numbers mean nothing?
> 
> It would seem our own scripts that do break on releases should be smart enough to realize a change in MacPorts version.

Our version numbers do mean something, but they don't always mean that all scripts will need to be updated. They do for 2.3.0 because in 2.3.0 we made two changes: we now using internal copy of Tcl instead of the one provided by OS X, and we deleted the fastload scripts that we were previously requiring other scripts to use.

It is possible that many scripts will need to be updated again in a future version of MacPorts, when we update to Tcl 8.6, because its try/catch implementation is different from the one we use in MacPorts. (Any scripts using try/catch will need to use the new version then.)