Cannot uninstall local port with invalid version number

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jul 20, 2018, at 13:52, S P Arif Sahari Wibowo wrote:

> On 2018-07-18, 16:56, S P Arif Sahari Wibowo wrote:
>> # port -f uninstall installed
>> Warning: Failed to open Portfile from registry for alpine @2.20_0.97.114.105.102.115.97.104.97.1+without_tcl
>> Error: port uninstall failed: Registry error: Invalid version '2.20_0.97.114.105.102.115.97.104.97.1+without_tcl' specified for alpine. Please specify a version as recorded in the port registry.
> 
> So, any thoughts?

Your message may not have reached all users, because you wrote to the defunct macosforge list address instead of the new macports list address. Messages do forward from the old address to the new one, but users with restrictive email server settings may not receive those forwards, so please write to the new list address in the future.


It has always been invalid to specify anything other than a nonnegative integer for the revision. It was a bug that previous versions of MacPorts allowed this to happen. MacPorts now correctly complains about it.

I do not know how you can uninstall this port now. I have a feeling that a similar situation has come up before; you could search the list archives.


> Where is this registry anyway?

You're not meant to modify this file manually, but the registry is an SQLite 3 database located at:

/opt/local/var/macports/registry/registry.db 

If you wish to examine or manipulate the database, you will need to load the MacPorts SQLite extension into your SQLite client. I don't remember how to do that but it's been discussed on the list before; you can search the archives.

It's possible that changing the revision for this installed port from this invalid revision to a valid value will allow you to uninstall it. It's possible you would still have to delete the installed port's tbz2 file afterward, since its filename contains the revision.