The problem is that if you do miss these messages, then you can't easily resurrect them other than installing the whole lot again.
True-ish. Well really you only need to deactivate and active the port again, since ports print such messages in the post-activate phase. But users don't know that. You could also read the portfile source code, but that's not really a clean solution either. Any suggestions for how we could improve this situation?
How about including some instructions like this in ports and install it in /opt/local/share/someplace?
README.macports or something like that.
It would be cool if the ui_msgs could be spit out using a port command, say 'port foo msg' or some such. I use user_msg in Portfiles for extensive documentation, a Howto really, on configuring some ports. For example: http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/browser/trunk/dports/net/nedi/Por... Though not many do this, it can be a HUGE timesaver for users. But since comparatively few ports have extensive ui_msg's, perhaps it isn't worth the effort. And it would be a low priority for the MP coders since there are other more foundational things to do. And I think evaluating variables might present some problems too. I usually use 'port ed foo' to look at the ui_msg's in another window. Mark