how keep particular broken port from trying to reinstall?

[Clemens Lang]

Hi,

On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 12:13:34PM -0500, Murray Eisenberg wrote:
> 1. Each time I upgrade any ports, automatically MacPorts notices that
> the port for qt4-mac is broken and attempts to build it again.

That happens because qt4-mac links against a library that isn't there
anymore or in an incompatible version. Please provide the output of
  sudo port -dy rev-upgrade

> Is there any way to do upgrades of other points without the
> time-consuming (always failing) attempt to rebuild qt4-mac?

Upgrade or install with --no-rev-upgrade:
  sudo port $verb --no-rev-upgrade $portlist
Alternatively, change revupgrade_mode in macports.conf to report.


> 2. I’d try to uninstall qt4-mac and re-install the older version that,
> I believe, was unbroken.  But there are a whole bunch of other ports
> that depend on it. How may I get around uninstalling those dependent
> ports and reinstalling them later?  (I believe I need to use a “-f”
> parameter but otherwise am uncertain how to do this.)

Yes, -f would allow you to do that. Note that if this were a global
problem with qt4-mac, a lot more people would be seeing it, so it's
likely that you'd also see the problem with an older version of qt4-mac.
Additionally, it is possible that qt4-mac is actually broken in this
state and cannot be used, so we should really try to figure out what
went wrong for you here.

-- 
Clemens