rebuild a package without an update

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi Ryan!

Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>> So I have to force the "gcc-4.2" of xcode... that one works (and, luckily, libxml2 still compiles with it)
> My point is that "sudo port upgrade outdated" should work. If it does not, we may have a bug somewhere that we need to fix, and what you're describing above sounds like we haven't declared dependencies correctly somewhere, or maybe we have a circular dependency. Forcibly rebuilding a port is nice to know how to do, I just wanted to emphasize that it is not a task we expect users to need to do on a regular basis.
>

you are perfectly right! Since I'm am on an old (even is "beloved") OS 
version, I expect some hiccups, but this is harder.
However, as I tried to explain, the problem is a bit deep - causing all 
MacPorts compiler to break is a pain on systems which have an older 
toolchain. Probably this goes unnoticed on newer macs where the system 
clang/gcc is "new enough".
Here were are in the situation that if, for some upstream reason, 
libxml2 stops compiling with gcc 4.2, the user has no workaround and is 
stuck in an endless dependency.

Maybe somebody knows how to lessen this? Dr. Kenneth Cunningham? 
Statically linking some base stuff could be a "foundation" to build on 
indeed.

Riccardo