the avahi daemon isn't working properly anyway: launchctl shuts it down within a minute or so of boot. 

Jun  6 19:12:24 white launchd: org.freedesktop.avahi-dnsconfd: respawning too quickly! throttling
Jun  6 19:12:24 white launchd: org.freedesktop.avahi-dnsconfd: 1 more failure without living at least 60 seconds will cause job removal
Jun  6 19:12:24 white launchd: org.freedesktop.avahi-dnsconfd: will restart in 10 seconds
Jun  6 19:12:26 white launchd: org.freedesktop.avahi-daemon: exited with exit code: 255

Don't I already have an mdns responder running in the base OS (he asked rhetorically)? 

But for this: 
--->  Unable to uninstall avahi 0.6.16_1, the following ports depend on it:
--->    evince
--->    vino
--->    seahorse
--->    evince
--->    vino

I would take it out. Can a placeholder like what we do for XFree86 be used here? 
--
Paul Beard
words: http://paulbeard.org/wordpress
pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pdb206/
Are you trying to win an argument or solve a problem?