In fact, those existing known_fail cases are not always known to fail LOL. We do not want to block some configurations unnecessarily – unless it is really impossible to build a port due to missing crucial features in SDK. Secondly, red marks do not necessarily mean a port does not build.Ģ. Firstly, there are none buildbots on PPC presently, AFAIK. Indicators of ports health are not useful for PPC at all.
Other than that, for 90 per cent of what’s there, as you noted, a simple port install x will do the job with little fuss or muss.ġ. Too long didn’t read: if one can switch brain gears on the fly, there’s probably a lot of fixes/workarounds one can try to get the very most from macports, but it also requires a reasonable grasp of the inner mechanics of how macports is designed - not necessarily something which most macports users are likely to be able to tap into intuitively/instinctively. Something fairly similar came up with coreutils in another situation.
gz archive was still present in the repository - did build fine some time ago on another PPC Mac of mine with similar specs as the Mac which couldn’t build the current version. This came up not too long ago when I couldn’t get the then-latest version of graphviz (a dependency for a bunch of other stuff, as you know) to build/install, but noted how on one of my PPC Macs, an earlier version - whose. The other thing about macports I can’t put my head round (or am able to figure out): when viewing a repository for a particular port in a browser, to see what still lingers in the repository, one can see there are a couple (or even a few) earlier versions/revisions of that port gzipped, but from a command line, trying to request an earlier version will always fail (for me, at least). It’s not the headspace I usually find myself when I’m more focussed on finding the port and just getting it built to run (the way my brain works, I have to be in the head space to dig and tinker beneath the bonnet, which unfortunately isn’t something I can switch on and off as needed instead, I have to make it my plan for the afternoon/evening to do deep exploring and tinkering).
Fink, meanwhile… I haven’t seen or read anything about Fink in ages, and I’m not sure of its project status presently.įor a platform designed, above all, to remove much of the guesswork in compiling open source and/or free software across multiple versions of the OS, this workaround remains the one vexatious sticking point which deviates from its overall (and broadly handy, fairly accessible) user-friendly mandate.Įven though I build and install stuff from macports regularly (most recently, building SDRangel on High Sierra, as a complement for gqrx), I frequently forget how if one drills deep into the port files tree, the information you mentioned usually shows up. Homebrew on PowerPC, as memory serves, is supported/maintained via Tigerbrew, though I’m not sure how regularly ports/brews get updated/maintained for relatively slower PowerPC systems. Consequently, especially on PowerPC systems, one can expend a lot of time trying to install a port which will never install on your build of OS X. It’s only when I try actually installing the port that the error-out dialogue will report that this OS X requirement is needed. For example, say I want to install Qt5.5 (for use in other GUI-based port applications later on): when running a “port search” on Qt5.5, the single-line description doesn’t indicate that this port will only build on OS X 10.7 and above. One thing which continues to be a bit vague about macports documentation, which can get sort of annoying after a while, is not being able to determine in advance whether a particular port will build/install before one actually runs an install command. I use macports across all of my Macs - ranging from a G3 running 10.4.11 to a Core i5 running 10.13.6. This can be helpful when determining whether something will build on your own system, but it isn’t a hard and fast rule.
Generally, and from applied usage, I get the impression macports gets maintained most thoroughly of the three.ĭiscussion and support for macports stuff on this forum is fairly brisk and ongoing, and on the macports site, there are matrices on each port directory page which show how well macports project team members, on their test machines, were able to build a particular port on a particular OS X/macOS version and architecture (indicated by red “X”s or green “√”s).