You can sometimes run into screwy things when you try to update a package installed from another source. For instance, I installed octave 2.1.73 as a binary from hpc.sourceforge last year with no problems (it did not work completely, but it was okay). This was installed in /usr/local. I then installed octave 2.9.9 from hpc.sourceforge and had problems with the functionality. Then I tried to use the darwin ports of octave. This did cause me problems. I had to remove the octave-2.9.9 directories from /usr/local and had to rename /usr/local/include/readline. The port of octave-2.9.9 would find readline.h directory under /usr/local/include/readline and therefore not create its own readline directory under /opt/local/include. The problem was that the header had changed. I found this out in old posts install errors dealing with "readline". Apparently, when the port is run, it will sometimes go looking for things in your path, and if it finds it anywhere, it can cause problems if it is not fully updated. While I have not tried installing anything from fink, it is possible that something similar is happening. You can always use "-vdt" on your ports to get more error reporting.

Try the commands:

ls -l /opt/local/bin

which emacs

and if you absolutely have to:

locate emacs

one of these might point to why you seem to have problems with the uninstall.

However, you should be aware that even if you install this again, I think you may only get a command line editor. When I ran configure, with the flags, it said it was checking for X, which it did not find, and then checked for /usr/X386 (Xfree86), which it also did not find (since X is under /usr/X11R6, as I recall). So, it said that it configured emacs but without any windowing capability in the configure report (which you get with the above flags). I also found the following online from:

http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-changes/2006-October/000742.html

"emacs 662

variants {darwin_8 darwin_7} description {The GNU Emacs text editor (command line only)}"

There are actually a couple of emacs ports. Try:

port list | grep -i emacs

and you will find 5 of them (emacs-app, emacs, emacs-devel, xemacs and emacs-w3m). You can then do:

port variants emacs-devel

and

port info emacs-devel

this one has a carbon and x11 variants. emacs-app, is Coca based on Mac OS-X. One of these might actually be the one you want.

Hopefully one of these will work.

- M.

On Feb 27, 2007, at 1:03 PM, macports-users-request@lists.macosforge.org wrote:

Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 07:34:40 -0700

From: Rob MacLeod <macleod@cvrti.utah.edu>

Subject: Re: emacs install breaking

To: Elias Pipping <pipping@macports.org>

Cc: macports-users@lists.macosforge.org

Message-ID: <CED922F8-4F33-4A2D-BE6A-CFDEBCE97408@cvrti.utah.edu>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed

Hi

On Feb 26, 2007, at 10:44 PM, Elias Pipping wrote:

sudo port -f activate emacs should solve the problem.

Thanks for the reply.

Unfortunately, this suggestion did not work:

[idsl210:/opt/local]$ sudo port -f activate emacs

Password:

---> Activating emacs

Error: port activate failed: File exists

And when I try to run the program

/opt/local/bin/emacs: No such file or directory

So I cannot seem to either completely remove the program or

completely install it. Each time it gets to the activate stage, I

get the report that the file exists.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Cheers,

Rob

Regards,

Elias Pipping

On Feb 27, 2007, at 6:29 AM, Rob MacLeod wrote:

Hi,

I am trying to get emacs working from MacPorts and my first try

would not launch its own X-window but ran in the xterm where I

launched it. It also reported a warning that the directory

/opt/local/share/emacs/21.4/leim

was missing, which it was when I went looking. I am not sure what

this directory does or whether its absence explains why emacs was

lamed.

I am now trying to do a fresh install of emacs but running into

problems. I keep getting this error during installation:

---> Activating emacs 21.4a_1+darwin_8

Error: Target com.apple.activate returned: File exists

Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

I have tried uninstalling emacs using

sudo port uninstall emacs

and then

sudo port clean --all emacs

and still I get this same error.

Does anyone have any guesses about what might be going wrong.

As background, I have used fink since the beginning of OSX time,

used emacs on Unix for many more years before that. I am trying

to move from Fink to Macports but so far, the experience is

mixed. I left Fink because it was falling behind on new

versions. I hope MacPorts will work for me...

Thanks,

Rob