[MacPorts] #47755: Broken symlink left by select code when selected port is deactivated causes poppler and other ports using aclocal to fail during configuration.

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jun 23, 2015, at 3:30 PM, Christopher David Ramos wrote:

>> I don't think you understand what Git is.
>> 
>> Git is not a "platform" by any reasonable definition of the word. It's
>> a version control system: a tool that allows content creators (usually
>> software developers) to organize and distribute their work (usually
>> source code). Git has nothing to do with compiling or installing; as
>> Ryan already said, a project's choice of version control does not affect
>> how it builds and works (Git submodules and such notwithstanding).
>> A project that interferes with MacPorts will do so whether you retrieve
>> it with Git or Mercurial or Subversion or curl or wget or Safari or lynx
>> or floppy disk.
> 
> Sorry, my understanding of the relevant vernacular is far from perfect.
> I do understand, however, that git is about version control of, usually,
> source code. That said, if building the source code of any given git
> project leads to conflicts with Macports, doesn't that constitute an
> undesirable conflict? Not just for end-users but for the Macports
> project leaders. Still, I think the Macports version of git should have
> some mechanism, or some warning -- something -- to warn or prevent
> conflicts between Macports and git projects.
> 
> Maybe you are saying that one should not use git if one does not know
> where downloaded projects will install files upon compilation (I think
> the instructions are in makefiles). Fine, fair enough. My counter is
> that the average Macports user -- myself included -- is not aware of the
> intricacies of what Macports does behind the scenes. Macports is
> designed to prevent conflicts between active ports and, if necessary,
> disallow installation of ports that would conflict with active ports.
> 
>> This would not be warranted. We might as well add such warnings to any
>> port that allows you to download a file or compile a binary.
> 
> Most ports, I think, are the end-product -- compilation carefully
> directed by Macports -- and do not download further files (emacs, pip,
> etc not withstanding). This, however, is not the case with git, which
> knows nothing about how Macports does things.

There is no inherent conflict between MacPorts and any given software downloaded with git. Rather, there is (apparently, from what you've told us) a conflict between MacPorts and the specific software you downloaded with git, but that conflict would have been present regardless of how you downloaded the software; it has nothing at all to do with git. Git is just a program that lets you download things. It has no knowledge of whether those things you download are going to conflict with other parts of your system.