Is there a well-defined way to do "bleeding edge" ports? Should there be one?

Daniel J. Luke dluke at geeklair.net
Mon May 23 11:59:40 UTC 2022


On May 22, 2022, at 5:32 AM, Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> wrote:
> It is possible but not permitted to specify "the latest code" (such as a Subversion repository trunk or a git repository main or master branch or the head of any branch in any revision control system in fact) because if you did that, what one user received when they installed the port at one moment in time would be different from what another user received if they installed it at a different moment in time if there had been commits to that branch of the repository between those two moments in time, but MacPorts would not convey that difference in the output of "port installed", nor would "port outdated" convey to the user who installed the port first that any update were available. If the port is distributable, users would receive even older versions of the software from whenever the buildbot first built it.

+1 for this

We'd not want such a port in the man repository, but in Bill's case, it would be reasonable for him to do this locally... Macports wouldn't know that the trunk (or whatever branch) had been updated, so he'd need to manually rebuild - but that seems like something manageable for just using MacPorts for nice reproducible(ish) builds + easy cleanup of temporary versions.

-- 
Daniel J. Luke



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