Versions in ports

[Artur Szostak]

Hi,

After about a year's worth of experience with MacPorts, there is something that I still do not understand: why is there no mechanism to express version requirements in the dependency information for a Portfile? I have been running into a number of situations where upgrading or downgrading an individual port leads to an inconsistent/incompatible combination of package versions. It seems that unless you are busy hacking away at your system, the only reasonable upgrade path is always:
  sudo port upgrade installed

To me, it feels like the MacPorts documentation is misleading the end user to believe that upgrading/downgrading individual packages is a routine and safe procedure, when my experience tells me otherwise. Can anyone point me to the reason behind these design decisions?

Kind regards.

Artur