For ImageMagick I had this livecheck defined: livecheck.check moddate livecheck.url ftp://ftp.imagemagick.net/pub/${name}/$ {name}.tar.bz2 When the portfile was up to date, "sudo port livecheck ImageMagick" returned quickly. However, when a new version of ImageMagick was available, that command took awhile, and I could see from my network traffic meter that it seemed to be downloading the entire archive before telling me the port was outdated. Why is MacPorts downloading the file I specified, when I only wanted it to check its modification date -- a check which MacPorts is obviously already doing correctly, else if would be downloading the archive every time I check. But it's not; it's only downloading it when its modification date has in fact changed.