Clean install of Big Sur and MacPorts but old Xcode

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jun 25, 2021, at 16:39, ChrisF wrote:

> I've upgraded to Big Sur (11.4) using a clean install followed by a restore of all users( except MacPorts) from a Time Machine backup. I also restored apps.
> 
> When I went do a clean install of MacPorts I saw that XCode was still present in Applications, had a bit of a brain fade and assumed that it had been updated like the other Apple apps, and went ahead an installed MacPorts without further ado. (I have not installed any ports yet.)
> 
> So now I think I have MacPorts linked to a 10.x version of XCode. I've downloaded the latest version of XCode from the App Store, and I was just about to uninstall MacPorts  when I read the first para of 2.4 of the User Guide, which suggests that I seek advice here.
> 
> So, do I need to completely uninstall and reinstall MacPorts or is there an easier path to a reliable MacPorts?
> 

I would say just update Xcode and leave MacPorts and the installed ports as-is. They're probably fine.

MacPorts itself doesn't record or remember what version of Xcode you used when you installed it. If you were able to install MacPorts, then MacPorts itself is fine.

A small minority of individual ports do remember what SDK version was used when you built them. And even if you installed any of those ports while having the wrong version of Xcode, in many cases this problem won't affect you since in many cases you receive a binary from our server. However on macOS 11 SDK versions are changing much more rapidly than they did with macOS 10.x so even if you receive a binary from us it may still have the wrong SDK version baked in. (See for example https://trac.macports.org/ticket/62440.) This is an ongoing problem that we still need to fix in several ports (for example by making those ports not bake in an SDK at all or by making them bake in a more generic SDK such as MacOSX11.sdk (which exists for any Xcode version 12.5 or later) or MacOSX.sdk (which exists for any Xcode version of the past many years) instead of e.g. MacOSX11.0.sdk (which only exists in Xcode 12.2 and not in later or earlier versions).