Is It Safe To Use reclaim?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On May 2, 2020, at 21:18, Michael Newman wrote:

> Late last year I ran reclaim for the first time. It was somewhat of a disaster because it removed ports that I actually wanted and I ended up having to completely reinstall MacPorts.
> 
> Since then I have been afraid to use it again.
> 
> As far as I can tell there is no way for me to be sure that ports that I have actually requested have been so flagged:
> 
> MrMuscle:~ mnewman$ port installed | grep lynx
>   lynx @2.8.9rel.1_1+ssl (active)
> MrMuscle:~ mnewman$ port installed requested | grep lynx
> MrMuscle:~ mnewman$ 
> 
> I know that I can use setrequested to flag a port, but how can I know on which ports I need to do that?
> 
> The only way I can think of is to manually go through the list of installed ports, try to recognize the ones I've requested, check to see if they are so flagged and, if not, manually flag them.
> 
> Is there an easier way?

"sudo port reclaim" is only as good as the metadata stored in the registry. You can verify and correct that the metadata with these steps:

Look at the output of "port installed unrequested". If you see any port in that list that you actually do want, indicate that by running "sudo port setrequested thePortName".

Look at the output of "port installed requested". If you see any port in that list that you do not personally want, indicate that with "sudo port unsetrequested thePortName".